Good 7s response

One of the pleasing and notable aspects of last week’s CITC Rarotonga Club Sevens rugby matches was the high number of young players, under 19s (and not necessarily regular Senior A graders) playing for the various club teams.

With our national Cook Islands teams recently participating at the U19 Oceania Qualifiers(held in Samoa from August 23 to September 3) and the recently-held sevens trials in Rarotonga to select a squad for the Oceania qualifier sevens (held in Darwin on October 1-2) extra interest has been generated leading into this year’s CITC - Rarotonga Club Sevens.

This prepares the local teams for this year’s CIRU International Sevens Tournament to be held November 4 to 6 at the BCI Stadium in Nikao.

After each team played three matches each, the final Week 1 placings were as follows: 1st, Eels, 2nd, Dragons, 3rd, Panthers, 4th, Reds, 5th, Cowboys, 6th: Bulls .

Remember all teams will receive prizes but the competition format is about weekly-consistency, so the team that consistently plays well each week for the whole four weeks of competition will be best placed to win the major prize. There will also be individual awards for the Player of the Tournament, Top Try scorer and also the Top Point scorer.

Top Try Scorer(After Week 1): Sema Robati (Cowboys) x4 tries, followed by Conrad Piri(Panthers) x3 tries.

Top points scorer (after Week 1): Conrad Piri (Panthers) with 23 points, followed by Sema Robati (Cowboys) with 20 points.

With player movement among the clubs, but with each team being restricted to use only 15players total for the four weeks of competition, it will be interesting to see which teams the returning local national CI sevens squad members, Teina Savage, Tepou Taana and 18-year-old Kairan Mahia will play for today.

See you today at 2pm at the Takuvaine ‘Happy Valley’ Rugby Field to find out who finishes on top this weekend.