BATH, ENGLAND – Taking a quick break from The Olympics, here’s a quick but full weekend Rugby Wrap Up.
JP Morgan 7s – All the pools matches have been played. We are now gearing up for the finals of this awesome tournament. The finals will be held at The Recreation Ground, home of the Bath Rugby FC on August 3rd. The final 6 teams are the host Bath, The London Irish, The London Welsh, Saracens, Sale Sharks, and Gloucester. Good luck to all teams, however one cautionary tale is that the winners of last year’s tournament were the Newcastle Falcons, who were relegated in the regular 15s season.
Super 15 Rugby Final – Another amazing season of Super Rugby is about to go into the books; all that is left is the final. It appears that our predictions were half right. The Chiefs did make the final by holding out against the Crusaders 20-17. Their opponents the Sharks surprised everybody for the second straight week and upset the Stormers at home 24 -19. This sets up a final in Hamilton, NZ this Saturday, Aug 3. The Chiefs will be going for their 1st title in their franchise history, the Sharks will be going for their 3rd and their first in 8 years.
Sonny Bill Williams –SBW has been a key member of the Chiefs team this season. He will be going into his second final in as many years of playing union with his second team (2 years, 2 teams, 2 finals in short). He has re-worked his contract to play in Japan (for Panasonic) to allow him to be available for the first 2 games of The Rugby Championship. This is big news for Kiwis because it has been confirmed this week that team stalwart and Outside Center, Conrad Smith (Esq.) will be unavailable for those first two games due to injury.
The High School All-Americans South America Tour: The young men have completed their 5-game tour of South America. We are disappointed to report that in their final game against the Argentina U-18 – where they fielded a side with only one player above 18 – they lost. The final score was 52-3. They did however managed to finish the tour a successful 3-2.
CAR 1C Championship –After 5 games across 3 days in one week, the new 1C champion of CAR is Botswana, who knocked out a tough Mauritius squad, 25 – 14. The winner now moves up to 1B and gets a chance to eventually compete for a Rugby World Cup spot in 2015.
That is it for me for now. You can find us on the Facebook Rugby Wrap Up Page or on Twitter @JunoirBlaber and @RugbyWrapUp, respectively. And as always, stay low and keep pumping those legs.
