NEW YORK, NY – Welcome to another edition of the Weekend Wrap. Today’s edition is still warm as it is fresh off the keyboard. We have a review of the Super Rugby semi-finals, we’ve got the results of The Commonwealth Games and news about the Premeirship 7s. We also have the latest transfer news/rumors and USA Rugby updates. With that, it’s time to steam ahead and get to the Weekend Rugby Recap:
Commonwealth Games: The Commonwealth Games are the third-largest multi-sport event in the world (behind the Summer and Winter Olympics), involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth of Nations have 53 members but 71 teams participate in the Commonwealth Games, as a number of dependent territories compete under their own flag (United Kingdom is broken up into Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland for instance). The games bring together globally popular sports and peculiarly “Commonwealth” sports, such as rugby 7s, which made its debut in 1998 (a year before the IRB Sevens Circuit had its debut season). The Commonwealth Games Rugby 7s competition occurred over the weekend in Glasgow, Scotland.
The South Africa Blitzbokke are the CWG Rugby 7s Champions. They took down the AIG New Zealand All Black 7s side, the only champions the CWG rugby 7s have ever had since their return in 1998. Australia shutout Samoa to win the Bronze medal.
Here are the results:
Medals
Final: New Zealand 12-17 South Africa
Bronze Medal: Australia 24-0 Samoa
Plate
Final: Wales 15-17 England
Bowl
Final: Canada 50-7 Cook Islands
Shield
Final: Trinidad and Tobago 7-43 Sri Lanka
Premiership 7s: The play-in qualifier for entry into England’s Premiership Rugby 7s was played in Cardiff at the Cardiff Arms Park over the weekend. As a sign of future things to come considering the impasse between Regional Rugby Wales and the Wales Rugby Union, the 4 Welsh regions have decided to play in the English club 7s tournament, the premier pro club 7s tournament. Hosts, Cardiff Blues and Newport Gwent Dragons became the first-ever Welsh teams to qualify for the Premiership Rugby 7s Series Final. Cardiff were declared winners based on point differential.
Here are the results:
Ospreys 21-33 Cardiff Blues
Newport Gwent Dragons 21-14 Scarlets
Newport Gwent Dragons 33-5 Ospreys
Cardiff Blues 22-7 Scarlets
Ospreys 28-61 Scarlets
Cardiff Blues 19-19 Newport Gwent Dragons
Super Rugby: After a super long Super Rugby season, we are down to two teams. RWU Super Rugby Superman, Jamie Wall, has a review of two quality semi-final match-ups. Please CLICK HERE.
Penalty Kick:
Transactions: The Super Rugby Cheetahs have confirmed that Springbok hooker Adriaan Strauss will not be renewing his contract with the Bloemfontein based franchise. All indications are that Strauss will be headed to Pretoria to join rivals the Bulls.
IRB 7s World Series Changes: We are getting unconfirmed reports that there will be changes to the 2014/2015 series and beyond. This may include the return of legs in Argentina and Uruguay, the moving of the South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and USA legs to different cities in those countries and the dropping of the Glasgow, Scotland leg to make way for a stop in Paris and/or Vancouver. As we said all of this unconfirmed but as they become official, we will let you know.
JWC 2015: Italy, more specifically, Northern Italy, have been named as hosts of the 2015 Junior World Cup. Matches will be played on June 2, 6, 10, 15 with the final on June 20, 2015 in Cremona. The June dates avoid a clash with the RWC 2015, and opens up a small space for any player from the JWC team to be a bolter and make the full men’s national team of their country, though this is extremely unlikely.
Billy Ocean’s Son Plays Rugby: The 31-year-old son of Billy Ocean – the Grammy-winning artist – turned out for Barbados in Glasgow on Saturday in the Rugby 7s competition at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Anthony Bayne-Charles was quoted as saying “Music is in my blood … I produce music myself, man in my downtime. I make a mix of R&B, soul, hip-hop … but the route I chose was out of the shadow of my father.”
USA Rugby News and Updates: On Friday, USA Rugby released a press release regarding the The 2014 Club 7s Championship. The event will be hosted by Seattle OPSB Rugby, who is now an affiliate club of Saracens, now known as Seattle Saracens. Last year won the club 7s title and tied the record for most Men’s Club 7s championship titles with 6. Starfire Sports in Tukwila is the location. It includes a 4,500-seat stadium and 11 outside fields, and is a world-class facility that houses the training headquarters of the Seattle Sounders (MLS). For the event, the complex will have a beer garden, fan zone, and apparel sales. Additionally, the complex will host a youth jamboree and high school invitational tournament (Serevi Cup), both of which will be powered by Serevi Rugby.
That’s it for now. Feel free to comment below, look for and “Like” our Facebook Rugby Wrap Up Page and follow us on Twitter@: RugbyWrapUp,Junoir Blaber, DJ Eberle, Nick Hall, James Harrington, Cody Kuxmann, Jaime Loyd, Karen Ritter , Jamie Wall, Jake Frechette and Declan Yeats, respectively.
