The Upside-Down World of Rugby Sevens

There's a bizarro rugby world where the USA frequently beats New Zealand, England wear brightly-coloured jerseys and South Africa are still good. Jamie Wall takes us down the rabbit hole of World Rugby Sevens.

The last couple of years have been rougher than a Richard Loe eye examination for South African rugby fans. The Springboks have dropped tests to Japan and Italy, as well as being also-rans in The Rugby Championship where they were flat-out flogged by the All Blacks, while most of the talk around the African Super Rugby teams is about why they shouldn’t be in the competition at all and how unfair it is that they automatically get a playoff spot.

But there’s a quick fix that suddenly gives the green jersey the prestige it earned over the past century and a bit – just take away eight players.

The World Rugby Sevens series is currently chugging away in the background of the current Northern Hemisphere club season and Six Nations build-up. The Blitz Bokke have claimed one tournament title (Dubai) and boast two of Sevens rugby’s most exciting players in Werner Kok and Seabelo Senatla.

Here’s the best part for South African fans: the last time they played the All Blacks, they beat them. In fact, the All Blacks Sevens have been so mediocre there’s been calls for them to be stripped of that hallowed name.

They haven’t even looked like regaining the championship they’ve otherwise dominated since its inception. A trip to the Olympics turned into a national disgrace, however it shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone who followed Sevens closely last year. In that season the All Black Sevens team managed to lose a hattrick of games to the United States.

All sorts of rugby norms are flipped on their head in Sevens. England routinely ditch their traditional blank slate jerseys for designs that were probably conceived after a heavy dosage of magic mushrooms. The creativity of their jerseys is matched by the effectiveness of their on-field performances, which really put the tired old notion of English stodginess to the sword.

Even the refereeing is strikingly different. The top whistleblower on the circuit, Rasta Rasivehenge, regularly controls finals not involving his native South Africa – making him the highest profile non-white referee in the game.

Of course, the abbreviated version of the game is still most well-known for the prowess of Fiji. The island nation has never achieved much in the full version of the game, despite producing many talented players, but in Sevens they’re the team everyone loves to watch. There's sure to be a movie version of their triumphant Olympic campaign at some stage – it ticked all the boxes of an uplifting Disney production, right down to the fish-out-of-water coach.

While most things seem upside-down in Sevens, one thing is definitely on the level with what is happening in the 15-a-side game. The recent tackle law changes that have caused confusion and angst in the Northern Hemisphere club scene are definitely going to impact the Sevens Series when it starts up again, if the recent NZ Provincial Sevens were anything to go by. Basically every match involved at least a yellow card, with several seeing teams reduced to five players at one stage.

This weekend sees the circuit hit Wellington, which in itself has a strange storyline as a venue. So far the players have enjoyed running around in front of bumper crowds at Dubai and Cape Town, and sold out venues await in Sydney and the granddaddy of them all, Hong Kong. But fans have deserted the New Zealand leg of the circuit in recent years – mostly because of the organisers' attempts to focus on rugby rather than the traditional getting drunk and having a good time. Ironic given the typical fan experience at an All Black home test.