Uruguay bafflingly push to qualify for the World Sevens Series

In an unfortunate development for "Tier 2" rugby, recently Scotland, Wales, & England merged their 7s setups into a Great Britain side. This opened up a new spot on the World 7s circuit (although the recent Welsh effort was so weak in 7s they were threatening relegation anyway).

7s is basically rugby's equivalent of 5-a-side football. It is useful reduced format for recreational and amateur participation plus fits nicely into events like the recent Commonwealth Games. However the many games over long weekends across different time zones makes it difficult follow closely year round and severely limits its potential to grow popularity as a spectator sport.

A WR employee acknowledged its limits as a product in a recent interview with Rugby World talking about the need for other attractions and a Darts style atmosphere at the events. At 7s most popular port of call in Hong Kong apparently there is a saying "if you ever get bored of the sevens, you can turn around and watch the rugby".

Despite this WR often push 7s as the key to growing game in "Tier 2" countries. This is partly a patronising Tier 1 effort to excuse some historically weak efforts to grow 15s by fobbing off Tier 2 Unions with the version of the game they don't care about. It is partly a delusional idea that 7s is rugby equivalent of T20 cricket which totally misunderstands the format. It is also partly due to the overly hopeful idea Olympic entry is the golden ticket for growing into a hugely popular global sport (unfortunately this idea is not helped of course by the fact the Olympics outside the big few events are mostly a not particularly popular set of niche sports only noticed once every four years).

In reality though, entry to the 6 months 7s circuit has nearly always been a negative drain on the 15s for most low resource "Tier 2" nations (Fiji is a very notable exception for despite being low in money are extremely resource rich for suitable talent and the 7s game being a rich part of their rugby history).

These nations have tended to end up in a muddle. They sort of follow "Tier 1" in that they don't often play 100% with their best possible talent. But take enough talent that it still takes a few players from the 15s player pool which for those "Tier 2" nations is very small comparative to any "Tier 1". As a result they end up in the undesirable situation of achieving 100% of their potential in neither 15s or 7s.

The biggest example of all here is Canada. But also to various different degrees Samoa, Spain, USA, Portugal, Russia have all ended up somewhat muddled. (Japan keep 7s distant enough from 15s but that has just left them with a virtually pointless bottom of the table side full of 5th tier talent).

More 7s focused nations Germany and Hong Kong

There is plenty of evidence of how having a team on the 7s circuit risks for most "Tier 2" nations only negative effects for 15s with little upside. So well informed Unions on the recent "Challenger 7s" who have not drunken the Kool-Aid the Tier 1 WR were selling to them ought to have known this. The question is what Unions really wanted to take that extra Sevens Series spot the most?

The answer was probably Germany, who are led by a credulous CEO who is one of the very few who believes the comically ludicrous fan statistics that Nielsen Sports produce for WR and uses that as the basis for the nonsensical view 7s is the future of the sport. Since the collapse of Capri Sun sponsored 15s team DRV have targeted 7s. Not the a recommend decision (and now a problem for the expanded REC), but to be fair to the Germans, their policy is at least coherent and not confused in same way as others. They have been clear in going 100% for 7s. Avoiding the trap achieving sub-par potential in both codes.

Hong Kong also target 7s more, even resting some players for their RWC qualifier vs Tonga for this event, and have relatively small 15s schedule. Whilst it also makes more sense for Uganda to push for 7s circuit spot considering African sides also play relatively few matches a year. It would have been better if any of these three had qualified considering none appear to progressing anywhere in 15s anyway so can at least devote 100% effort towards 7s (however if rugby is to ever grow in the Asia and Africa regions though to find a decent 24th RWC team it will take a fully focused 15s effort to do so).

However there is a problem. Germany, Hong Kong, Uganda are all nations of not huge strength in rugby. The RWC sides involved Tonga, Uruguay, Chile, Georgia are all stronger rugby nations with better talent pools. If they really cared enough to pick their best talent to beat them at 7s they all could.

As it happens. Tonga did not care enough. Chile even at home did not care to add many top tier 15s talent either. But Georgia and Uruguay whilst hardly loading their teams with big names to be as strong as possible both decided to field stronger sides with more 15s talent than they usually ever would (neither has cared much for 7s in the past). This talent overcame early adjustments needed for the format enough to beat more focused 7s specialist setups Germany or Hong Kong and reach the final.

Uruguay the winner ... but also the loser

So this final ended up being one where the losing side would win by being spared the confusion and hassle of interrupting 15s resources. In the end Uruguay were the winner .... but also the loser.

You could hardly find a nation more ill advised to start a World 7s Series adventure than Uruguay. They are small nation, with a tiny player pool with few genetic freaks, who have to fully maximise their talent to overachieve and punch well above their weight to compete with bigger nations in 15s.

This makes the Uruguayans drafting in half a dozen young players from their 15s setup (Baltazar Amaya, Felipe Etcheverry, Bautista Basso, Tomas Inciarte, Carlos Deus, Tomas Etcheverry) to achieve qualification an utterly bafflingly daft decision from the Union. If they intend to field this team on the full time 7s circuit then they will have reduced strength in depth from a 15s player pool that has precious little. They would also fall into the 7s trap of not achieving full potential in either code.

If on the otherhand they don't interrupt their 15s player pool, then they just qualified with a stronger team than they actually intended to field on the actual 7s circuit, and will likely be totally uncompetitive with all but the lowest of low effort sides on the circuit which would be utterly pointless.

Either way using 15s players to qualify for World 7s Series was an incredibly unwise move from the URU who had been doing such good work to improve over last five years. You might have thought they could have seen other examples of "Tier 2" nations on the circuit and been warned off. But instead appear to have followed the false 7s cliched myths sold by the sports ignorant "Tier 1" leaders.