The Santa Monica Rugby Club (SMRC) has qualified for the USA Rugby National Sevens Championship for the first time in six years. The tournament will be held this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin and marks the SMRC’s first appearance in the Championship since an unbroken streak of qualification from 2014-2018.
Much like soccer has a number of different variations, including five-a-side that’s played on a substantially smaller pitch, rugby also has a number of different forms and one of those is a seven-a-side game, except this is still played on a full-size pitch.
The game of sevens is typically a summer sport and was recently in the spotlight when the US women’s national team, the Eagles, took a surprise bronze at the Paris Olympics after putting in a stonking performance and defeating the historically superior Australian team, the Wallabies. New Zealand took the gold, because of course, with Canada claiming the silver.
The men’s Olympic sevens tournament was a spectacular affair with the legendary French Scrum Half Antoine Dupont demonstrating once again why he’s the best player in the world giving the host nation the gold.
Traditional rugby is played with 15 players and each game is made of two halves of 40 minutes. With sevens, the pace is significantly quicker and consists of two halves of seven minutes with a two-minute half-time break. Rugby sevens has been an Olympic sport since 2016, sadly the 15-a-side game has not yet made it.
"It’s a version of the game that’s much easier to understand for anyone who doesn’t know very much about rugby," Danny Thomas, player/coach of the SMRC Sevens said. "A sevens competition is much quicker, it’s a fast turnover rate of teams playing, there’s much more emphasis on sheer physical speed, which makes it very entertaining. It’s an easier game to watch and can build an audience much quicker."
Thomas himself is originally from Farnham Common, England, however following a relocation to the West Coast, he became Santa Monica youth player for Lincoln Middle School and Samohi. He went on to play for the Santa Monica men's team while at Santa Monica College before transferring and playing for UCLA. From there he went professional and was signed by Major League Rugby team Old Glory in Washington DC. Now he plays and coaches for both the SMRC and UCLA and he will captain the team at the tournament this weekend.
The tournament takes place over Saturday and Sunday and in Santa Monica’s pool are the National Athletic Village (NAV) from North Carolina, the Austin Huns and the Detroit Tradesmen. A series of heats have already been played with other teams from around Southern California and the top 16 teams in the country qualify for the Championship. Unfortunately, Santa Monica’s first game of the competition is against the NAV, the winners of the tournament for the last two years. Santa Monica has yet to win the title.
But none of this deters Steven Johnson, President of SMRC. "Yeah, that’s going to be a hard game, but to be honest, there are other pools that are much harder than ours. And I think our biggest challenges will come after the pool stages."
"We have a lot of experience in our squad this year," Johnson said, adding, "There’s a lot of rugby IQ on the field and that experience translates both to and from the 15-a-side game. Handling is obviously key, as is speed and stamina and being able to recognize and create opportunities."
The USA Club 7s National Championship will be streamed live on the Rugby Network and Johnson has said that he’ll try to post updates as regularly as he can on the SMRC’s social media sites. Santa Monica’s first game is at 10am Central Daylight Time, 8am Pacific Time.
Los Angeles has a team competing in the Major League Rugby national competition for the first time in two years after the owner of the previous team was embroiled in a number of disputes regarding players and pay disputes, which led to their disqualification.
Last year was the Rugby World Cup held in France, which the US men’s team failed to qualify for, sadly. But the game is receiving a lot more attention at home and in fact the US is set to host the Rugby World Cup in 2031, so efforts are understandably being made to bring the standard of play up to a level to present a legitimate threat to traditional rugby powerhouses likes South Africa, France and of course, the mighty New Zealand.
scott.snowden@smdp.com
