AndyIn a massive boost to Russian rugby, Russia have been awarded the right to host the 2013 Rugby World Cup Sevens tournament. The tournament will be held in Moscow, and will cover both the men’s and women’s sevens tournament.
The tournament will give the Russian rugby federation the chance to boost it’s finances but, more importantly, the arrival of tens of thousands of rugby fans in Moscow will hopefully boost interest in the game itself among the Russian public. RRF Vice President Howard Thomas (great Russian name!) said:
“In order to help rugby grow in stature and make progress in Russia one needs to convince first the Government and then the public. We have the Government support and the second step will be to expand the concept to the public.
We felt that Sevens was ideally suited to help us attract the public and generate interest. It is much simpler than 15-a-side rugby, easy to educate, easier to explain and has been accepted into the Olympics, which is immensely significant in countries like Russia.”
By the way – if you’re interested in watching the Russian rugby sevens team in action, they’re playing in the London Sevens this weekend, and in the Edinburgh Sevens tournament a week later.
Matt Harris
You reportage is wrong. I’ve been a patron at the Dubai 7s twice, and I am quite confident that Moscow will not be hosting a 7s rugby tournament. I am much more inclined to believe they will be hosting a monster 3-day beer drinking festival where buckets of Heineken are sold at $20 a go in such quantities that they run out of buckets, and somewhere in the background, so some people will say, there are some blokes running about on a pitch (but they could just be folk looking for more beers).
Either way, Moscow has done well here. They’ll attract sports fans of the very best sort, and should do very well out of it.
The information is not entirely correct. Anyway, there is evidence not know.
I’ve been to the Wellington 7s, which doubles as a massive fancy dress party. Truth is no-one takes a blind bit of notice of the rugby; its just a good two days out and a drinking session of enormous proportions.
Which makes it ideally suited to Moscow. It’ll actually be a standard weekend there, just with some rugby in the background.
Seu blog é show!! Parabéns! Abraços.