Tournament report - Amsterdam Sevens 2014 (May 16-18)
The Amsterdam Sevens is a two-day invitational Mens 7s, Women’s 7s and Veterans 10s tournament on the Saturday and Sunday. Like in 2013, this year the last leg of the IRB Women’s 7s World Cup Series was played on the Friday and Saturday.
(My) estimate of attendance figures is between 3-4,000 for each of the three days. It looked quite a bit busier than last year, which may be the IRB Women’s factor or perhaps the weather (sunny and hot by Dutch standards), but the tournament seems well under way to needing a bigger stadium to accommodate all spectators for the bigger matches.
Besides most Dutch top clubs, participants include the national 7s teams from Georgia, Germany, Poland, the UAE and Paraguay (men) and Georgia, Germany and Switzerland (women). In addition,there were development sides from Denmark, Spanish Basque Country, French Lorraine and Russian Krasnodar regions (men) and Wales, combined England/Australia, France, Brazil, Norway,Switzerland and The Netherlands (women).
To illustrate the strength of the competition the national teams faced : Georgia (who were at the HK sevens in 2013) lost to the Samurai International invitational side in the men’s Cup final. The women’s Cup final was between the Tribe 7s (combined England/Australia) and Wales Dragons, both development sides – although as I understand the dragons featured national team players.
In terms of refereeing the IRB event is separate, but some of the IRB referees attended dinners and social events : James McPhail, who currently resides in Holland, plus some of the ladies referees appeared not to be deterred by the “primadonna” tag they received.
Referee manager Sean Mallon put great emphasis on referee development. A total of approx. 30 (!) referees were divided into groups of three, each group led by either an “active” referee development manager or a senior referee. Around ten “full-time” referee-coaches rotated groups such that each group would be monitored virtually all of the time.
The tournament is played on ten pitches, all natural grass but for the main stadium pitch which is Astroturf. Because of the number of matches, delays did occur having a knock-on effect and there were some issues with referee assignments as a result. However, by building in sufficient breaks in the schedule, each match-day was completed on schedule.
Both the referees’ hotel and the rugby grounds are quite far outside of town but transport took less than 20 minutes and only those who wanted to stay behind to watch the IRB Women’s finals on Saturday had to make their own way to the evening social events.
Assignments for the semi-finals and finals were based on performance during the first day, alas -but perhaps understandably- without much elaboration on the why and how. Yours Truly was in the middle for several of the Tribe 7s England/Australia development side (ultimate Cup winners) and for the Cup semi-final on the main stadium pitch between Germany and the Wales Dragons.
Most if not all of the finals were refereed by the youngsters, i.e. those in the 20-25 age bracket, mostly Welsh, English and Scottish. I suspect this was done in order to give younger referees a sniff at high pressure matches on the international stage outside their home turf.
This year was the second time Japan delegated a referee (Sakurako-san, who was in Hong Kong as well for this year’sWomen’s Sevens) plus a referee-coach, and the UAE had two referees present. The tournament, with high level rugby, strong focus on referee development yet a relatively informal atmosphere seems to me an excellent basis for an international exchange.
Ralph Ybema
Hong Kong, 27 May 2014