Opinion & Analysis

Lining out for the Dubai sevens heaven

TONY ALLWRIGHT

ONLY A few days ago every paper and broadcast in Ireland was full of just one sporting event – the defeat of the mighty English by the plucky Irish in the latter’s quest for a first rugby Grand Slam since 1948 under the legendary try-scorer Jackie Kyle, when, coincidentally, England were also beaten by a single point.

So how could another rugby event, with a far more international flavour than a contest between a mere six countries, a World Cup no less, have glided so silently beneath the Irish radar? The quadrennial Rugby World Cup Sevens, just about to begin in Dubai, is one of the world’s great unsung competitions, and this time it’s not just for the boys.

A parallel competition has brought 16 women’s teams to Dubai to battle (minus burkas) for an inaugural Women’s Cup, with the Irish currently ranked sixth in the world (and ahead of England and France).

Sevens rugby is played on a full-size pitch, but each team has only seven players – three forwards and four backs – and each half lasts just seven minutes; yellow cards mean two minutes in the sinbin. Apart from that, the game follows the same laws as the 15-a-side version, but is played at a much more frenetic pace which is only for the super-fit.

Matches follow each other at strictly choreographed 22-minute intervals, which allow for stoppage time and changeover.

This means spectators gorge on a non-stop feast of fast, skilful, international rugby, for 2½ crazy days, interrupted only when attendants bring food and refreshment to your seat. It’s almost like getting up to go to work every day, except that every night is party time, which can make it hard to get up in time for the first game.

Bar a handful of games, the whole tournament takes place in a single stadium, which means not only do you see every knockout contest, but you never have to miss even a pool game.

The men’s 36 pool games occupy the first day and a half, after which a points system divides the teams into three groups of eight. On the third and final day they compete in three knockout battles for a bowl, a plate and the big one, the 2009 Rugby Sevens World Cup. In the midst of this, there is a break for a big parade of all the players and match officials and some extravagant entertainment.

The Sevens are being staged at a just opened stadium called, er, The Sevens, located on the outskirts of Dubai, a half-hour’s drive from downtown. It sports a permanent grandstand with 4,000 seats, plus temporary stands for a further 36,000 people. The complex has a secondary pitch which caters for 5,000 spectators where some of the men’s and most of the women’s games will be played, plus a further four.

It also incorporates changing rooms, hospitality areas, broadcast and medical facilities, as well as a 30-metre wide rugby promenade, featuring cafes and food outlets. Though intended to become the new new home of rugby in the Middle East, it will also target cricket, football, basketball and netball.

There is no doubting from the international array of colourful shirts, hats and other accoutrements on display in the streets and haunts of Dubai that there is a very big rugby event in the air.

You know it is rugby and not, for example, soccer because of the way all the men walk.

It is more of a slow, exaggerated, nautical swagger, with hips moving deliberately fore and aft while the manly shoulders sway in a kind of horizontal circle that says “I’m a tough guy, I could win this competition single-handedly, don’t mess with me”.

However, exchange a few words and they are instantly your best friend, as eager, enthusiastic and childish as you are to talk about the forthcoming games, the players, the beer, the rankings, the Fijians (current world champions), the All Blacks (everyone’s nemesis) and plans for the next competition in four years. And no player has even kicked a ball yet.

It all begins at 5pm today with Wales v Zimbabwe. An hour later Ireland, under manager Jon Skurr, plays its opener against a formidable Samoa. Australia and Portugal also share this tough pool.

Can’t wait.

Opinion & Analysis

Alternative rugby brings many surprises

OPINION: THE FIFTH Rugby World Cup Sevens hosted recently by Dubai was certainly a festival of surprises. The spectators’ unforgiving hard benches in the unforgiving open sun was one.

The parade taking place, without the combatants, on day one instead of day three as advertised was another.

A third, monumental surprise was the unceremonious dethronements of the champions (Fiji), the perennial favourites (New Zealand), the other big guns (England and South Africa) in the quarter-finals by presumed no-hopers Kenya, Wales, Samoa and Argentina, Ireland having previously taken out doughty Australia.

Then there were the sweet eventual cup-winning victory over Argentina by a deserving Wales and the gripping women’s inaugural final where the Aussies overcame the All Blacks.

The women’s World Cup competition was an innovation, which many welcomed but most found a tiresome interruption to the smooth progress of the men’s. It meant matches had to be held simultaneously on two pitches which you had to yo-yo between and still end up missing crucial contests.

Moreover, apart from the final few games, the standard of the women’s matches was mostly akin to primary schoolchildren’s and great if you enjoy the delights of slow play, knock-ons and dropped catches, but at least you could follow what was going on more easily.

Predictably, curmudgeonly chauvinists far preferred the troupe of leggy cheerleaders with their black and orange outfits and silver pompoms. With the same verve and energy as the players, they danced and leapt and cartwheeled all over and alongside the main pitch whenever there was a brief respite in the rugby.

The day one parade was very well choreographed and entertaining: half a dozen gaily-bedecked camels haughtily strutting their stuff like catwalk models, bare-chested kung-fu tumblers performing impossible acrobatics, Arab drummers in traditional robes providing a thrilling beat, children in beautiful Graeco-Roman tunics dancing in perfect unison, the lovely cheerleaders, of course, and other black-clad children releasing clusters of coloured helium balloons and rocketing streamers.

Within the compound outside the stadium, franchisees in huts and marquees sold their coffee, pies, chips and beer and ice creams, having, of course, ensured that everyone at the entrance gates had first been frisked of all food and drink. You had to buy coupons to effect payment.

An amusing sign in the bars admonished you not to drink and drive, while advising that the only way to dispose of unused coupons was by taking the car to a particular alcohol outlet in the distant fellow-emirate of Ras al-Khaimah. A merchandising store sold multi-coloured, overpriced rugby shirts and hats emblazoned to commemorate the event, which were irresistible.

Back within the stadium, we were regularly exhorted to join in with what has become the de facto anthem of big Sevens tournaments everywhere, Hey, Baby, will you be my Girl?, which has as much relevance to rugby as The Fields of Athenry. But similarly, when belted out with gusto to the non-existent rafters, you cannot but feel uplifted.

Disappointingly, the Irish crowd was so small and scattered that Athenry was never heard, except from my own spindly throat.

But what was heard roaring round the stadium, especially once Wales had secured the mantle of world champions was Tom Jones’s Delilah, that curious paean to violent domestic abuse (“I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more”).

But as Wales gloried on noisily, in the distance you could faintly hear disappointed Fijian, New Zealand, South African, Australian and English accents with their plaintive wail: “Why, why, why, Delilah?”

Alternative link to this page: http://tinyurl.ie/09-7s

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Good to report that as at
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he is at least alive.

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After 48 crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are, deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA

England get the Silver,
Argentina the Bronze.  Fourth is host nation France.

No-one can argue with
the justice of the outcomes