The Front Row Union Sport - RWC Sevens 2018: Men’s Day 1

RWC Sevens 2018: Men’s Day 1

Jul 21, 2018

—

We’ll bring you up to date with progress in the Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018 Men’s championship while we wait for Ireland Women to continue their journey.

The Men’s Championship features 24 teams, as opposed to 16 in the Women, which necessitated a preliminary round to get down to the last 16. This prelim round feature the bottom 16 seeded teams playing each other with the winners going through to play a top 8 side.

Ireland Men (16th Seeds) had a tough match against Chile (17th Seeds) in what was one of the closest games in the preliminary round.

Chile opened the scoring with Pedro Verschae scoring in the first minute but Ireland replied with Hugo Keenan and Billy Dardis both crossing before the break to give Ireland a 12 -7 lead as the teams turned round.

A try from Francisco Metuaze put Chile level with three minutes left in a tense second half but, just as the teams were looking at extra time a sensational break ended with Ireland’s James O’Brien touching down for the winning score in the second minute of added time. THe 17 – 12 win propelled Ireland into a Last 16 fixture against South Africa. THe rest of the preliminary round fixtures are shown below.

Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018, Pre-round of 16

KENYA 7S 19 – 7 TONGA 7S

CANADA 7S 29 – 21 PAPUA NEW GUINEA 7S

FRANCE 7S 50 – 0 JAMAICA 7S

WALES 7S 33 – 12 ZIMBABWE 7S

SAMOA 7S 45 – 7 UGANDA 7S

RUSSIA 7S 21 – 7 HONG KONG 7S

JAPAN 7S 33 – 7 URUGUAY 7S

IRELAND 7S 17 – 12 CHILE 7S

Ireland faced No. 1 seeds, South Africa, just after 05:30 UK/Ire time this morning and unfortunately the result went emphatically the way of the top seeds with South Africa recording a 45 – 7 win. Terry Kennedy was Ireland’s solitary try scorer with Hugo Keenan adding the conversion.

The result places Ireland men in the Trophy tournament, their next match is against 9th seeds Kenya at 22:04 UK/Ire time this evening.

The Last 16 results are shown below.