The pools and schedule have been confirmed for the men’s and women’s competitions at the HSBC Cape Town Sevens in South Africa this weekend.
The pools and schedule have been announced for the HSBC Cape Town Sevens 2019 at the Cape Town Stadium on 13-15 December.
The most mouth-watering of the pools is in the men’s competition, where the three medallists from last year will meet in Pool A in hosts and Dubai champions South Africa, USA and defending series and Cape Town champions Fiji.
With a snake format now used to determine the men’s draw – as it has been on the women’s series – it means that the eighth and ninth place finishes of USA and Fiji respectively in Dubai have resulted in the eye-catching pool that also features invitational team Japan.
With one of the three – who all finished in the top four of the 2019 series to book their place at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games – certain to miss out on the Cup quarter-finals there will be no room for error with Fiji, in particular, not wanting to miss out on the top eight for the second round running.
“It is a big pool and you can’t throw away Japan, I think they are a team that can also play well on their day,” said South Africa coach Neil Powell.
“It will be a tough pool. If you look at the pool it is one, two and four from last season’s seedings. It will be tough but maybe that is something we needed to get a good challenge and if we can get through it nicely it will build character. Hopefully it is a good weekend for us and we will take it one game at a time and our focus is on the first game on Friday night against Japan.”
Pool B in the second round of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series 2020 features Dubai runners-up New Zealand, Argentina, Canada and Wales, while Pool C has a European flavour with bronze medallists England paired with France, Spain and Scotland.
Samoa, Australia, Ireland and Kenya make up Pool D, which will kick-off the men’s competition on Friday with the opening match at 16:37 local time (GMT+2) to be between Australia and new core team Ireland.
