Anyone watching the Perth Sevens this past weekend may have been enthralled by the Springbok Sevens’ win over a tough Fijian side to claim their second title in four tournaments.
But while it was elite Sevens rugby that thrilled in the final, you can’t help wondering if Sevens rugby has finally lost its soul?
The decisions by World Rugby to condense the series to six tournaments, to limit it to eight teams and to give a brutal schedule to sides that involve only jeopardy may make sense from a short-term marketing perspective, but it has robbed it of its special nature.
The move has been a death knell for developing nations and has robbed the Series of its magic. It’s now a wham-bam-thank-you-mam tournament that offers no second chances. And sees the same teams face each other over and over and over. You get the point.
This weekend the Springbok Sevens side faced Fiji for the fifth time in four tournaments. They have faced them in every tournament’s pool round and will only miss them at the next tournament in the pool round because they met them in the final.
They say familiarity breeds contempt. The Blitzbok-Fiji games are incredibly close and should be celebrated. Instead, it is increasingly being met with a “meh” by fans I know and speak to, those who normally wouldn’t miss a game.
CARNIVAL OF HOPE
Sevens was never the die-hard winner in all rugby showdown that test rugby was. It was always a carnival of hope, a stadium of fun and a party that would go on for the entire weekend.
It was a place where Kenyan and Ugandan fans would pop up, sing with the travelling Fijians and watch rugby where teams like Chile faced Germany, right before an All Black-France showdown.
Now there is no Kenya, there are no small teams and there is no fun. It is solid marketing textbook stuff. There are still the fan stands and some of the costumes, but not one tournament has been full to the brim this season. Cape Town Sevens, for years the best tournament on the circuit in terms of ticket sales and fans, was nowhere near full this year.
For one Cape Town is still struggling from the hangover of the World Cup a few seasons back where World Rugby made fans wait to watch the Blitzboks until after 10pm. Few fans that were stalwarts of the tournament that I know have been back since.
NO MORE DAVID VS GOLIATH
In the new setup there is no David v Goliath, there are never upsets and we are rather treated to carbon copies of the same games in different venues week in and week out. The lack of variety, of drama and of hope is astounding. It is soulless and depressing.
Sevens was never supposed to compete with 15s, and was always meant to be the fun part of rugby. But the Olympics changed that, offering medals and glory and World Rugby were seduced by mingling with the Olympic family.
That was fine, and there are many positives from being an Olympic sport, but it was supposed to create pathways to grow the game. The World Series saw teams invest in Sevens, and professional programmes popped up all around.
Taking tournaments away, slowly killing off the golden goose and making it now a six tournament Series has seen teams withdraw their funding and the Olympics, for instance, saw Great Britain compete as one team instead of four Home Nations.
That in turn led to two of the nations not even bothering with Sevens and the rest making up a makeshift team to make up the numbers. That wasn’t at all how this was supposed to go.
There was talk that the Series was costing too much, but the travelling staff of World Rugby had a contingent almost as large as several teams and there were several other ways to change the series that would have left it better than it is now.
MINNOW NATIONS FACE UPHILL BATTLE
Right now any team outside the top eight faces a massive struggle to get into the top eight, and with the rewards being limited, so has funding.
What World Rugby has effectively done has been to create an elite eight team competition that excludes everyone else. Even the final three tournaments which will include second tier competition are likely to see very one-sided contests - the gulf has been created by their absence more than anything else.
For the fan, that means watching your team play three pool games on day one and two on day two. The whole day in the sun vibe is gone. The carnival is dead and the attendance figures speak volumes.
Sevens was always a place for smaller nations to thrive, to surprise and to build a reputation as giant killers with a sympathetic crowd at their back.
There is no place for that in the new World Series and for that rugby is immeasurably poorer, and the Series immeasurably less enticing for anyone but a hardcore fan.