Cable & Wireless Hong Kong Women's Rugby Sevens 2007 Official Tournament Draw

Hong Kong - The official tournament draw for the Cable & Wireless Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens 2007 (HKWRS) was held Monday at the Hong Kong Stadium, the venue for the Cup final for this year’s tournament. Twelve elite international women’s sevens teams will take part in the tenth anniversary Cable & Wireless Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens, to be held on Thursday and Friday March 29 and 30 2007 at So Kon Po Sports Ground across from the Hong Kong Stadium. The Cup final of the Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens 2007 will be played at the Hong Kong Stadium on Friday 30 March (kick-off at 6:42pm) as part of the Cathay Pacific/Credit Suisse Hong Kong Sevens 2007.

This year’s Cable & Wireless Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens 2007 has attracted another highly competitive mix of national teams and leading club sides from around the globe.

Defending champions, New Zealand’s Aotearoa Maori, are returning with a goal of maintaining New Zealand’s perfect record as tournament champions in each of the nine Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens played to date. Looking to unseat the Kiwis are last year’s Cup finalists Australia and national representative teams from the Arabian [Persian] Gulf, Canada, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Thailand and the United States of America.

Papua New Guinea, on its debut at the Cable & Wireless Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens, and the hosts, the Hong Kong Women’s Sevens Team round out the competitors for 2007.

For the draw the 12 participating teams were divided into pools of four. Four teams, (New Zealand, Australia, United States and China) were seeded based on their past results in the Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens and in other recent international and Asia regional women’s sevens competitions. Defending HKWRS Champions New Zealand are the tournament’s top seed in Pool A, followed by last year’s Cup finalists Australia in Pool B and 2006 HKWRS Plate champions the United States in Pool C. 2006 Asian Women’s Sevens Champions, China, are the top seed in Pool D. Following the seeding of the top four teams, the remaining eight competing sides were drawn at random to complete the tournament pools.

Canada, China and the United States will benefit from some recent match experience after appearing in the first ever 2007 Women’s International Sevens Tournament held in San Diego, USA in February. China beat Canada before losing to the USA and the USA ‘B’ and Canada ‘B’ teams to finish fourth overall in the five-team competition. Canada ‘B’ upset the hosts United States in the final by the score of 19 – 7. The results from San Diego point to the increasing parity in international women’s sevens and promise more excitement to come in the Cable & Wireless Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens 2007.