Dubai Women's Sevens

The Dubai Women's Sevens is an annual rugby union sevens tournament held in Dubai, UAE. The tournament includes several competitions including, since 2006, an international women's invitational competition. Though most entrants are ad hoc sides composed of club and international players from a variety of (generally European) countries, some are official national selections - the results of matches between such sides appear below.

Until the 2007 edition was held at the Dubai Exiles Rugby Ground, in 2008 it moved to The Sevens, a new stadium built to host the 2009 Rugby World Cup Sevens.^[1] The 2009 competition took place between 3–5 December.

In 2011, a new competition was launched by International Rugby Board (IRB) - the IRB Women's Challenge Cup - as a first step towards a full schedule of IRB-sponsored women's sevens events for 2012–13 season. It featured eight official national teams. The traditional international women's invitational competition also took place on neighbouring pitches.

Contents 1 Dubai Tournament 2006 2 Dubai Tournament 2007 3 Dubai Tournament 2008 4 Dubai Tournament 2009 5 Dubai Tournament 2010 6 Dubai Tournament 2011 6.1 IRB Women's Sevens Challenge Cup 6.2 Women's International Invitational Tournament 7 References

Dubai Tournament 2006

No official national selections.

Dubai Tournament 2007

Played on 1 and 2 December 2007 at Dubai (Source Canada Union) Participants included Canada and USA, but there were no inter-national matches

Dubai Tournament 2008

Date: 27–29 November 2008.

• England played as England Sporting Chance Foundation. USA did not have this tournament listed as part of their preparation. Netherlands and Canada are believed to have been near full strength as were the England team. A Kenyan team had entered, but withdrew (Source Netherlands rugby)

Dubai Tournament 2009

Venue/Date: 4 December 2009, Dubai. As ever the status of some teams is debatable. Possible International match ups are:

Dubai Tournament 2010

Venue/Date: 2–3 December 2009, Dubai. As ever the status of some teams is debatable. Fixtures between what appear to be international teams are:

Dubai Tournament 2011

2nd-3rd December 2011

IRB Women's Sevens Challenge Cup

The first fully sanctioned IRB women's tournament (apart from the 2009 World Cup). Held alongside that year's Dubai Sevens and the normal Women's Invitational, with the semi-finals, the final and all of the Pool A games held on the main pitch. Part of a plan to launch a full IRB International Women's Sevens Series for 2012–13. Selection criteria were not revealed by the IRB, though the teams selected and the seedings roughly reflected the 2009 World Cup rankings - but with China and Brazil invited instead of Spain and France in order to give worldwide representation. Spain were later included when New Zealand declined their invitation to attend.^[3]

Women's International Invitational Tournament

This tournament, as usual, featured a mixture of national selections and international invitational teams. The official national teams were France and Kenya in Pool A, and Netherlands and "Maple Leafs" (the Canadian development team) in Pool B. Unofficial teams were Moscow Region and Tuks (South African universities) in Pool A, and Iron Ladies (Ukraine) and Team Globaleye (international team) in Pool B.

• Netherlands reach the final, where they beat the Maple Leafs
• France were knocked-out in the semi-finals by Maple Leafs
• Kenya lost all of their pool games, but finished as runner-up in the plate.

The following are the results of the games involving the official national selections (including the Maple Leafs, though their games are not internationals) - full results can be found here.

References