The 12 men’s and ten women’s teams competing in the second round of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series 2022 in Dubai on 3-4 December are looking forward to a rousing reception from an enthusiastic crowd as fans return to The Sevens Stadium.
The second Emirates Dubai 7s event in succession follows last weekend’s series opener which saw South Africa and Australia win the men’s and women’s titles respectively.
Matches in Dubai will be played across two pitches and will get under way at 09:00 local time (GMT+4) on Friday 3 December with France v Great Britain in women’s Pool B.
The men’s competition in Dubai sees the 12 teams divided into three pools of four teams, replicating the Olympic competition format.
South Africa will begin their campaign to win a fourth round of the Series in succession in Pool A against Great Britain, Ireland and Japan.
Pool B sees last weekend’s silver medallists USA take on Australia, Kenya, Canada.
While Pool C includes Olympic gold and bronze medallists Fiji and Argentina respectively, alongside France and Spain.
USA’s Stephen Tomasin is looking forward to the return of the fans: “Last weekend was a great start to the season for us. We showed that we can take lessons learned from one day and apply them to the next. From here, we have to show consistency and improvement in slight aspects of how we play. There’s no better place to do that than in front of 50,000 roaring fans in Dubai.”
New Zealand’s men’s and women’s teams, who won the respective Series titles in 2020, and Samoa’s men’s team are unable to participate in Dubai due to the challenges of the Covid-19 travel logistics.
Great Britain is participating in the opening two rounds of the Series, as part of the standing agreement to play the calendar year 2021, before reverting to compete as national unions for the remainder of the 2022 Series, with England, Scotland and Wales participating in the men’s Series and England in the women’s series.