City gets ready for Sevens bonanza
Print Edition
The 2013 Shanghai Sevens, China’s largest rugby tournament, will be held at Yuanshen Stadium in Pudong New Area this weekend.
The two-day event consists of two tournaments Ñ the Asia Pacific Women’s Championship and the men’s Invitational Club Sevens.
The women’s championship features teams from Australia, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, China’s Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Japan and host China.
The Chinese men’s national team will be competing against teams from the United States, as well as local clubs and teams of sports academies, including a “Shanghai Hairy Crab” team that comprises mostly of local expats.
Rugby will return to the Olympic fold after nearly a century at the 2016 Rio Games in Brazil but not in its original format but as a seven-a-side sport. Dubbed in some quarters as Olympic rugby, sevens is still in its early stages of development in China.
According to Zhong Min, director of the China Rugby Association, apart from building up teams to prepare for the Olympics, the main task of the association is still to popularize the sport among the youth. It will cooperate with local education departments and promote rugby in middle schools and colleges.
The Shanghai Sevens, which moved to Yuanshen Stadium in 2011, will provide provincial and local club teams more time on the pitch this year, in another effort to stimulate interest among the public, officials revealed.
Saturday features round-robin matches while the semifinals and finals fall on Sunday. Ticket prices range from 150 yuan (US$24.66) to 1,800 yuan.
Former All Black Justin Marshall and ex-English international John Bentley as well as Eddie Jones, head coach of the Japanese national rugby team, will make an appearance at the weekend.
The event has been a stop on the HSBC Asian Rugby Sevens Series since 2009.
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