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How about a sevens world cup and invite league
Peter Witts Blog | April 08, 2008 | 5 Comments @ How about a sevens world cup and invite league | Peter Witts Blog | The Australian
ALL this talk of the two rugby codes getting back together again may be premature, but I had a brain wave on the weekend which I reckon could be the perfect compromise, and the first step on a journey towards one game, which Australia would dominate for 10 years until the rest of the world caught up!
That brain wave came in the unlikely vision of the Adelaide rugby sevens.
Now, the thing about sevens, I find, is that it is polarising amongst rugby fans.
Some people can’t stand it. It somehow bores them, or perhaps because Australia ain’t great at it, the game never really grabs them.
I used to be like that, until, in 2006, I was lucky to get to the final day/evening of the Commonwealth Games sevens competition.
What a revelation. I came away from the ground with massive respect for the way the game is played, and also for the culture of the competition. I also realised that the guys who play this game are much fitter – or at least they appear to be – than your average player.
I worked this out after watching the star-studded Aussie team – there were at least three current Wallabies on display – make it to the last few rounds before a string of injuries and what looked awfully like pure exhaustion took its toll.
To me, it was quite awesome to see which guys really rules the roost in sevens, and let me tell you, it’s not the boys from Camp Wallaby or the mainstream All Blacks.
So, with that history lesson to guide me, I put in hard yards on the couch, studying the Adelaide sevens on the weekend just past. For those who don’t know or care, South Africa won a blistering final against New Zealand. Australia were beaten by the South Africans on the way.
The speed of the game made the new ELVs look tame.
It was also great seeing teams such as Kenya and the Cook Islands really take it to the more fancied nations. And of course, the South Australians loved it too, with healthy crowds and a ringing endorsement of “come back next year please” from the South Australian Premier.
Now, here’s the idea. Why not have a sevens world cup and invite the leaguies?
We already know that sevens was the way several of the league players who moved to rugby first tasted the game.
Sevens is pretty simple in some ways, but it rewards skill and enterprise. I reckon that the better league teams could very easily adapt to the rugby format via the sevens style. Imagine Inglis and Lockyer, playing alongside Beale and Latham in this form of the game?
And critically, we would NOT have give up half of rugby’s rules or concepts to make this work. The lineouts, scrums, breakdown, et cetera all remain. The league players would just have to learn the skills and adapt.
At the end of the competition, you would have the likes of Gasnier, Ryan, geez, even Willie Mason, all familiar with the skills of a game where the ball is alive all the time and can be competed for.
Think about it.
That would set the platform for the league teams to enter the real world and at the same time we would avoid having to create a new hybrid game.
What do you reckon?
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Brother Gallagher I hear you 
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