What is Rugby Sevens?
Rugby sevens is the seven-a-side format of rugby union, which also includes a 15-a-side format.
By whom, where and when was Rugby Sevens invented?
Legend has it that rugby union was invented during a football match in 1823 when a student at Rugby School in Great Britain called William Webb Elis picked up the ball in his hands and ran over the goal line.
Between 1845 and 1848, pupils from the Rugby School and students from the University of Cambridge in Great Britain documented and codified the rules of 15-a-side rugby union, while rugby sevens was conceived in 1883 by two butchers, Ned Haig and David Sanderson, as a fund-raising event in Melrose, Scotland.
What are the rules of Rugby Sevens?
Rugby sevens is played on the same full-sized pitch as 15s, but the team is composed of seven players: three forwards and four backs.
Any player awarded a yellow card must leave the pitch for two minutes while a red card means they will play no further part in the game.
The ball cannot be passed forward from hand and kicking is permitted.
The team with the highest score at the end of the match wins. Five points are awarded for a try, two for a conversion, three for a penalty, and three for a drop goal.
How long is a Rugby Sevens match?
A rugby sevens match is 14 minutes long, featuring two halves of seven minutes each.
Who is the best Rugby Sevens team in the world?
In the women’s game, Australia and New Zealand are the two most decorated teams.
Both have won an Olympic gold medal and out of the four Rugby World Cup Sevens to date, they have secured two each. They are also the only two nations to have won a World Series title, and the Kiwis lead the way with six to Australia’s three.
Fiji’s men are unarguably the kings of men’s rugby sevens having won both tournaments to date.
Those two nations are joined by South Africa as the most consistent winners in the World Rugby Sevens Series.
Rugby Sevens and the Olympics
Rugby union has featured at the Olympics four times in its 15-a-side format: at Paris 1900, London 1908, Antwerp 1920, and Paris 1924.
At the 121st Session in Copenhagen in October 2009, the IOC members voted in favour of re-introducing rugby to the Olympic programme at Rio 2016 in its sevens format. Australia won the women’s title and Fiji’s men won the Pacific island nation’s first ever Olympic gold.
Fiji then defended the men’s title at Tokyo 2020, while New Zealand’s women won their first rugby sevens Olympic gold medal.
Best Rugby Sevens players to watch
In the women’s game, Charlotte Caslick is considered one of the greatest players of all time, having helped Australia win Olympic gold at Rio 2016, the 2022 Sevens Rugby World Cup, and twice been awarded the World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year title (2016 and 2022).
Other players to watch out for are Portia Woodman-Wickliffe of New Zealand, who won gold at Tokyo 2020, and has scored the most World Rugby Sevens Series tries of all time, while her compatriot Michaela Blyde, who is second on that list, also won gold at Tokyo 2020 and won the Player of the Year award in 2017 and 2018.
On the men’s side, keep an eye out for USA flyer Perry Baker, who is third on the all-time World Series try-scoring charts and was crowned best player in the world in 2017 and 2018.
Fiji’s two-time Olympic gold medallist and 2019 Player of the year Jerry Tuwai remains one of the sport’s finest playmakers, while Argentina’s Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 gold medallist and 2021 World Player of the year Marcos Moneta is an unrivalled finisher.
Rugby Sevens Competition Rules at Paris 2024
A total of 288 athletes (24 teams) competed in the Olympic Games Paris 2024 rugby tournament, hosted at the Stade de France.
Twelve teams of 12 players qualified for both the women's and men's tournaments, broken up into three pools of four teams.
The top two finishers in each pool and the two next best finishers advanced to the quarter-finals, followed by semi-finals, a final, and a bronze-medal match. There were placing matches for the teams that did not qualify from the groups.
