Wish I'd not stayed up... poop!

I seem to remember Wigan winning the Middlesex 7s a few years ago

Fiji is the only country where 7s rugby is the national sport.
Every kid in Fiji plays an informal form of 7s in any spare bit of ground they can find.
Part of the reason they are taking to Rugby League so quickly is because the basic skills of running, passing and tackling are things they learn about 5 minutes after they learn to walk.

Men against boys in that final. Fiji are a bit special, but GB's handling is woeful, and they just couldn't stop the offload in the final. They did well to make the final and showed alot of heart to get there, but a league 7's team would wipe the floor with the GB team. If you shut down the space for their speedsters they don't have the ability to break a team down.

Fiji were great but, it certainly showed up the British defence.
First contact was dire which made the offload just too easy.
They (the Fijians) looked bigger, faster, stronger and more skillful.

What was staggering was the comment from one of the British players, who said they didn't even know each other until 10 weeks ago and yet they were able to make an Olympic final !

Does anyone realise how well GB did to even get to the final? Fiji as well as most of the other countries, play 7s all year round in different competitions. England and Scotland are the only teams who play 7s regularly and aren't even ranked in the top 5 nations. The GB team had only been together for less than 10 weeks and played against what you would call a professional 7s outfit in Fiji and took a beating. To get to the final was a monumental achievement and they should be applauded for finishing in the silver medal position.

well i have been entertained , been great to watch

and it has been a hit and will be in the olympics for years to come

for GB to reach the final was an amazing achievement. new team put together only 10 weeks ago, losing to fiji is not the end of the world even if the manner of defeat was disappointing

interesting that jarred hayne couldnt get in the fiji team

Quick question.... Why are you praising a team for coming second ??? IMO that's everything that's wrong with our sporting culture

because it was totally unexpected for GB to be in the final.

now praising tom daley and his partner for getting a bronze medal

I sort of get your point I take it you look on it more like the aussies and yanks who don't really see 2nd or 3rd as any real achievement? I think in the Olympics it's a little different and I enjoyed the tournament as a speccy GB certainly over achieved.Fiji were always going to win and anyone who comes home with a gong of any colour can and should be proud.even athletes who don't make podium are doing something pretty special in their field.been some amazing sport so far imo

I'd say daleys pair getting bronze was just as unexpected as rugby lads.listened to the diving final on radio whilst at work and it was surprisingly tense.the Chinese pair were in different league.iv watched and listened to as much Olympics as possible there's only golf and tennis (sports I normally like watching)that haven't caught my imagination .even the clay pigeon thing was enjoyable

"I remember Wigan winning the rugby 7s a few (lol) years ago"

"Wigan showed the way in 2001"

A couple of choice quotes from this thread because Wigan won a tournament 15 years ago.

Australia rl could put a team in that would have a good chance of winning gold but apart from that, the other 4 countries that play RL (eng, nz, png and France) would get absolutely mullered by their rugby counterparts


Regards

King James

nah daley was expected to get a medal

chinese were awesome i watched it

cant do with watching tennis and golf though!

Lol

Wigan did it in the late 90s and after a number of years being overtly professional the Rah Rah types genuinely thought they'd surpassed the skills levels of Rugby League and got brave enough to invite Bradford.

Bradford, having been roundly stuffed by Sts on a Friday night SKY game, then travelled straight down to Twikkers, breaking down on the M1 and spending the night on the hard shoulder. Despite a tough SL game the night before and have no sleep, Bradford proceeded to stuff all and sundry from the Kick n Clap brigade winning the title in more emphatic style than Wigan had.

The wobbly chinned softies haven't felt brave enough since to invite a Super League to their sub standard Rugby tournament.

Jog on Lebron!

Yours sincerely

Avenger

We have virtually no chance of getting into the Olympics. We should however be pushing to get 9's into the commonwealth games.

Yep. We have to build. Use 9's as an international development tool. It's never going to get any traction as a domestic club competition but it can be used as Union has used 7's. Aim to get it into the Commonwealth Games and then build again from there.

Rugby Union has trademarked the phrase 'rugby' so they can call it whatever they want.

:CLAP

Because League is generally played at a far quicker pace then Union, our players seem to have far better core skills in all areas, with the exception of goal kicking and of course we couldn't compete in rucks/ mauls but, passing, spacial awareness and tactically, I think we would still show the Union boys a thing or two.
I noticed that the scrum feed (for the 3 man scrum) was anything near straight.

Scrum feeds aren't straight in the 15 man game either, but as the ref already blows his whistle every 10-15 seconds, if they penalised every infringement of the arcane laws....

Trying to force 9s doesn't seem right for me - it's like we've seen the success of 7s and just picked another random number.

What I'd prefer to see is using the 7s, where you'll note a lot of the players aren't full-time RU players, to showcase the benefits of RL. I think we could get more of our players playing in the 7s, representing GB, and then shouting loud about how it is their NRL/SL experience which is what's led them to smash the 7s.

The skill-set of 7s is very similar to RL and if you look at why the Fijians are so much better than GB its because they look like a line-up from an NRL game. GB looks like the back-line of an RU team, which is small and wirey and not designed to do more than one role (ie both attack and defend).

Use what's already there instead of trying to replicate/compete against the much better funded, managed, and marketed RU. Surely it doesn't make sense to try go directly up against that given the limited funding and current support for RL??? That would be like trying to set up an RL team in a RU-only area like Twickenham.

I know what you mean but then any success is just given to Union instead of retained by League. We need to develop along League lines with a League focus rather than just hoping some of League players playing 7's will talk about how good League is.

We need League infrastructures setting up and the quickest and easiest way to do that is in our own mini-version of the game.

Dude you are dreaming. Rugby league players going into union 7's will be treated as union 7 players.

League won't benefit at all from it. heard the same when hayne went NFL and when Burgess went to union. Need to stop this myth that when league players go to another code somehow it will benefit rugby league.

Just for the record, in NZ during pre season they have the Wellington sevens and the Auckland nines. Guess which one is more popular these days.

Rugby league needs to do something with the nines sport. Union has sevens locked down. We have to be different

Forgive my ignorance, but is there any reason why a RL side cannot enter a team in one of the 7s tournaments?

I watched bits of a 7s on TV recently and it was mostly AP teams in the finals. I know it was out of their season, but they seemed to mostly field their academy players anyway.

Is their anything to stop Wigan/Leeds or anyone else entering what would clearly be a RL based team?

Just a thought about either getting league players in to Olympic 7's or league 9's into the commonwealth games. Both competitions take place in the summer and therefore any player participating would presumably miss what could be vital games for their club. I'd also assume they'd not be able to just drop in for the couple of weeks of the event. I'd read that the players in the olympics had "only" been together since May. So taking a random example like Sam Tomkins....How would fans of the Wigan club (or choose a "star" player from your own club) feel about losing a player, for three months of the season...and then imagine you have two players selected.
Any thoughts?