KZN Sevens leg on at Glenwood

The annual KZN leg of the schools Sevens tournament takes place at Glenwood on Saturday, 17 August. It’s an all day affair starting at 8am and featuring 17 KZN teams along with 3 from Gauteng.

Former sponsors @Lantic have now withdrawn their funding of the national circuit so hopefully a new overall or even regional sponsors come on board really soon.

Obviously there is the benefit that rugby players gain from playing this version of the game, although I personally have to say that I believe the divide between Sevens and the 15-man game is growing and with it the importance of Sevens in a player’s overall development is diminishing. It also vexes me when the Blizbokke claim success for a player that the was always destined to make it to the top long before his one season Sevens sabbatical.

• With regards to these specific school Sevens tournaments around being played the country, everyone starts on the same footing. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Tier-1 big shot or the little team from say Toti, there’s opportunity aplenty for surprise packages to getting the results and/or winning one of the finals of the day.
• In the past the overall winning school would advance to the Champion of Champions tournament, where the national champions would be crowned. So for Sevens no ranking system required, the pools stages followed by a knockout takes care of this. In the past many of these end stages games have been televised.
• Selectors will be on duty to pick a provincial team that will take part in the equivalent of Craven Week for Sevens. For the last few many of these matches have been shown on TV as well.
• An SA Schools Sevens team is chosen and for the last two seasons this team has travelled abroad to compete in international tournaments. Pretty cool and great incentive for those players and schools who do take Sevens seriously.

Perhaps the one big drawback of Sevens, is that it’s played at a time of year that eventually puts it on a crash course with matric exams and this is expected to play out on Saturday again, where those who attend should see a high content of Gr.11 players.

In 2012 Maritzburg College won the title with a very young team. Surprisingly only one of their players, Richard Bamber made the KZN Provincial team even though he did not play at the Glenwood tournament and ended up withdrawing from the team anyway. Equally astonishing was that the player of the KZN tournament, Morné Joubert was also overlooked for selection. In both the cases of College and Joubert, the commitments of having to play in the Champion of Champions tournament and attending the SA under-16 High Performance course respectively, might have influenced the selection decision-making.

With the Rugby Championship starting on Saturday and the Currie Cup on the go, it is going to take a bit of motivation to get down to the grounds and watch this schools Sevens unfold. However if you want to come back here and deliver meaningful comment about who should have been selected for KZN but didn’t get in, its best to put about 3-4 hours aside and get down to Glenwood.

Timetable:

2012 TEAM