IRB Sevens World Series

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The IRB Sevens World Series, known officially as the IRB Sevens before the 2006-07 season and also sometimes called the World Sevens Series, is a series of international rugby union sevens tournaments organised for the first time in the 1999-2000 season. The tournaments, run by the International Rugby Board, feature national sevens teams. The series was first formed to develop an elite-level competition series between rugby nations and develop the Sevens game into a viable commercial product of the IRB. In 2005-06, the tour received 1147 hours of air time, 530 of which was live, and was broadcasted to 136 countries.[1] All international teams compete for the Sevens World Series title by accumulating points based on their respective finishes in each of these tournaments. The tournaments span the globe, with the following events included in the 2006-07 tour:

Dubai (Dubai Exiles Rugby Ground): December 1-2, 2006
South Africa, aka George (Outeniqua Park, George): December 8-9, 2006
New Zealand (Westpac Stadium, Wellington): February 2-3, 2007
USA (PETCO Park, San Diego, California): February 10-11, 2007
Hong Kong (Hong Kong Stadium): March 30-April 1, 2007
Australia (Adelaide Oval, Adelaide): April 7-8, 2007
London (Twickenham): May 26-27, 2007
Scotland (Murrayfield, Edinburgh): June 2-3, 2007

In 2005-06, the most famous Sevens event, the Hong Kong Sevens, returned to the series after a one-year hiatus in 2004-05 for the IRB Rugby World Cup Sevens, which was held in Hong Kong in March 2005 and won by Fiji.

Sevens is a stripped-down version of rugby union, with seven players each side on a normal sized pitch rather than the normal fifteen. Games are much shorter, lasting only seven or ten minutes each half, and tend to be very fast-paced, open affairs. Sevens is traditionally played in a two-day tournament format, with the Hong Kong Sevens (an anomaly as a three-day event) being the most famous. It's quicker and higher-scoring than 15-a-side rugby, and the rules are far simpler, which explains part of its appeal. It also gives players the space for superb feats of individual skill, with the fantastically athletic Samoan, Fijian and New Zealand teams particularly prone to spectacular showboating.

New Zealand and Fiji are traditionally the strongest teams, although in recent years Australia, Samoa, England, South Africa, Argentina and France have all won tournaments.

1 Previous Series Winners
- 1.1 Past Tables
2 The season
3 Points schedule
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Previous Series Winners

2000 - New Zealand
2001 - New Zealand
2002 - New Zealand
2003 - New Zealand
2004 - New Zealand
2005 - New Zealand
2006 - Fiji

[edit] Past Tables

Final 2005/06 table
Pos	Team	Points
1	Fiji	144
2	England	122
3	South Africa	110
4	New Zealand	76
5	Samoa	72
6	Argentina	64

Final 2004/05 table
Pos	Team	Points
1	New Zealand	116
2	Fiji	88
3	England	86
4	South Africa	76
5	Argentina	68
6	Australia	46

Final 2003/04 table
Pos	Team	Points
1	New Zealand	128
2	England	122
3	Argentina	98
4	Fiji	84
5	South Africa	74
6	Samoa	60

[edit] The season

In a normal event, 16 teams are entered; in Hong Kong, 24 teams enter. In each tournament, the teams are divided into pools of four teams, who play a round-robin within the pool. Points are awarded in each pool on a different schedule from most rugby tournaments—3 for a win, 2 for a draw, 1 for a loss. The first tiebreaker is difference in points scored during the tournament.

Four trophies are awarded in each tournament, except for Hong Kong. In descending order of prestige, they are the Cup, whose winner is the overall tournament champion, Plate, Bowl and Shield. In Hong Kong, the Shield is not awarded. Each trophy is awarded at the end of a knockout tournament.

In a normal event, the top two teams in each pool advance to the Cup competition. The four quarterfinal losers drop into the bracket for the Plate. The Bowl is contested by the third-place finishers in each pool, while the Shield is contested by the last-place teams from each pool.

In Hong Kong, the six pool winners, plus the two highest-finishing second-place teams, advance to the Cup. The Plate participants are the eight highest-ranked teams remaining, while the lowest eight drop to the Bowl.