Summer of 7s

In April we travelled to West Park Leeds twice in a week to follow BUCS Rugby 7s; our first visit saw bright sunshine, our second snow.

In May we headed south to Bournemouth for a fantastic 7s festival, professionally managed by Diamond Sporting Group. The worthy winners were Apache.

Our travels in June saw us interview England winger, David Strettle as he gave us an exclusive into the Sevens and the City tournament at Allianz Park. Locally, we watched the Skofic7s and first became aware of the RFU's National 7s competition, 24Seven or is it TwentFour7s? No matter, the final was scheduled for 24/7 and no doubt the final will be at 7pm! The qualifiers from the Skofic7s were www.redpanda-sports.com

The next tournament meant a visit to Winnington Park RUFC for the Chester7s, a growing 7s and netball festival run by the ever helpful, Tom King. This event has really strong facilities and attracted elite 7s teams such as:

Rotherham Titans
PowerBombs
Samurai
RedPanda

The eight teams competed in two groups of 4, the top 2 into the cup and the others into the plate. The final was a victory for Samurai over Powerbombs. The plate final saw RedPanda overcome the Titans.

Into July and the next stop was Swansea for the World University Sevens Championship; my colleague Chris Heal providing comprehensive coverage via Twitter and a series of written articles. A well organised international tournament that saw victories for Australia in the men's and France in the women's.

Then on the 17th July it was back to West Park Leeds for the RFU's Northern Regional Final. No snow, only sun and a high quality performance by MightyPeth and RedPanda to gain qualification for the National Final on 24th July.

Then comes the Singha7s, the Rio7s and the Red Bull Uni7s - we will continue to be pitch side bringing you news, views, interviews and action. Our colleague, Tim Baynes uses the term "Sayitin7" and we will be doing just that