Dubai Sevens - surprises galore

For the first time ever Fiji did not make it through to the quarterfinals of the Sevens series,  France and Argentina went through in Pool A. 

So who played whom in the quarterfinals:-

In quarterfinal 1  England - after loosing in the pool game against SA - beat France in the quarterfinal by 7 points.

In quarterfinal 2  New Zealand managed to beat the USA easily by 26 to 5 points.

In quarterfinal 3  SA beat Argentina by a 7 point margin

In quarterfinal 4  Samoa surprise Australia by winning by 5 points,

So here goes - the semi's are between NZ against England and South Africa against Samoa.   I think NZ is the favourites to win the Cup and forecast that the final will be between NZ and SA.        

As expected NZ and SA are through to the final.   NZ struggled hard and the fact is they won the game by a 7 point margin.   SA beat Samoa by 38-7 - so easy a win in the semi.

Based on results thus far in the Dubai Cup the final will be a very even match, but I still favour NZ to win this one.  

Cloudy

I took the ladies form NZ to win - but thought the NZ men could also be the winners,   However,, the Blizbokke  easily beat NZ by 15-0 and got the feeling that the Blizbokke was unstoppable in the mood they were in.   They copied the example of the Springbokke in the WC final.

I was frankly not impressed by Fiji.   They narrowly won two of their three pool tests and lost against Argentina.   There were three teams on 7 points and France and Argentina had bigger point differences than Fiji had,   They will have to play a lot better than they did in Dubai.    

Next week the Sevens move to Cape Town.   The Blitzbokke has never won the Cape Town Tournament and I wonder whether they would be able to win that one.      

Samoa did well to get to the semis.

We struggled a bit with Kenya and England in the pool games but knockout was easy.As in 2015 Cape Town sevens which we won ,we had Kenya and England UK n our pool then.We lost to Kenya in the pool but beat Argies in the final in 2015 after England were knocked out in our controversial pool encounter.

Sorry - I forgot about the 2015 final.   Since then we never won one trophy in Cape Town.  Might be different in Cap Town - the pools will be as follows:-

Pool A   =   SA

Pool B   =   NZ

Pool C  =   England

Pool D  =   Samoa

I do not have the rest of the teams yet - only the top 4 ratings based on the Dubai series is a given - I will update as soon as the pools are available.  It would be interesting to see where Fiji fits in - they will go all-out for revenge after a poor start to the season in Dubai.