Mbombela gears up for Provincial Sevens
The top South African men’s and women’s Sevens players will look to make their presence felt in a thrilling spectacle of rugby at the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit on Friday and Saturday at the annual South African Rugby Union (SARU) Interprovincial Sevens tournament.
The provincial showdown will feature 16 men’s teams and 18 women’s teams, with the sides going head-to-head on Friday and Saturday for the title of SARU Interprovincial champions.
The 16 teams in the men’s division will feature the 14 South African provincial unions, a Pumas Lowveld team and the Limpopo Blue Bulls, while the Women’s division will include teams from the 14 provincial unions, a Blue Bulls Invitational side, the Limpopo Blue Bulls, SA Students and South African National Defence Force (SANDF).
The Blue Bulls men and Border women will enter the competition as the defending champions.
Should the Border women’s team succeed in defending their title, they will round off a fantastic year for women’s rugby in East London, as the Border women’s 15-a-side team secured their hat-trick of Women’s Interprovincial titles earlier in the season, while the Imonti Penguins from East London won the SARU Women’s Club Championships last month.
The participating players will have extra motivation to stamp their authority as Springbok Women’s Sevens coach Renfred Dazel and SA Sevens Academy coach Paul Delport and manager Marius Schoeman will attend the tournament to scout for players.
Dazel and his scouting team will select 24 players to be invited to a three-day training camp in Stellenbosch where they will undergo medical assessments and skill and fitness evaluations. They will also receive coaching and conditioning interventions and education outlining what it takes to be a high-performance athlete. On the final day of the camp, they will be integrated into teams with the current Springbok Women’s Sevens squad and play a series of matches.
Should any of these players make the grade required to play international sevens rugby, they could be invited to train with the squad next year in Stellenbosch on an intermittent basis.
Western Province and the Leopards will line up in the opening match in the women’s division at 09h00 on the A field at the Mbombela Stadium, while the Leopards and Limpopo Blue Bulls men’s teams will meet in their division’s opening match at 09h40.
On the B Field, meanwhile, the SA Students and SANDF women’s teams will meet at 09h00, while the Border men take on the Blue Bulls at 09h40.
The top teams in each division at the end of the opening day’s play will meet in the Cup Quarter-finals on Saturday, while the lower-ranked team’s will battle it out in the Bowl Quarter-finals before the teams play for the Cup, Plate, Bowl and Shield later in the day.
Jacasport/SARU