Hannover Rugby Sevens Tournament

This is just a heads up for anyone in the Hannover area on the weekend of the 12th-13th July. An AER-FIRA Rugby Sevens Tournament is being held at the AWD-Arena in Hannover (Saturday from 11am to 8:30pm and Sunday from 9:30am to 5pm). The tournament is an official qualifier for the IRB Sevens World Cup in Dubai next year so many teams have sent strong squads to compete, including 6 Nations countries Wales, Ireland and Italy. For those new to the game, Sevens is a shortened version of Rugby Union played, as the name suggests, with only seen players per team on a full sized pitch making making it a fast and open game with plenty of scoring. Games are shorter than regular 15-a-side but teams have to play (in this case) seven games over two days. Sevens is usually associated with a fun and party atmosphere so it should be a great day out for anyone who manages to go.

There are two groups of six teams, with the top two teams in each group qualifying for the Cup semi-finals, the next to for the Plate semi-finals and the last two teams for the Plate semi-finals.

Group A

Portugal
Spanien
Russland
Deutschland
Rumänien
Georgien

Group B

Wales
Irland
Italien
Ukraine
Polen
Belgien

Tickets can be bought by phoning the hotline: 0049-511-96900316 or going to the ticket office on Ernst-August-Platz 8, 30159 Hannover

for more information you can visit their website:

Hannover Sevens website

from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_unio...lsh/7488243.stm

im going down on the sunday for the finals.looking forward to it'should be fun

if i could get a cheap flight I'd join you but at the moment the cheapest I've found is €190 or the train which costs €138.

I'm in town and have Saturday free - anyone else interested in coming Saturday?

SitRep from Hannover.

Russia and Italy have disappointed. (Well, Italy didn't so much disappoint, as lost. ). Ireland and Wales played well, especially Wales. Portugal are very strong, definite favourties, Spain not so.

Germany were really not bad, losing only narrowly to Portugal, but they won't place well. That the German crew are so proud of their Turkish captain, is really great to see.

Looking forward to more great rugby tomorrow. I won't be there for the morning games, but the semis and the finals in the afternoon should be more interesting.

The crowd was good - I walked in and sat down next to Trevor (English, g'day Trevor), his nephew Nathan (g'day Nathan), his Scottish mate (g'day Scottish guy), and Guido, the local who plays rugby (g'day Guido). Guido proceeded to tell me that, had he been sitting next to another Hannoverian, they would probably have exchanged all of 5 words all day. Instead, we talked about rugby, our kids, our work, our lives, our wives, and more. What is it with these people here that they close themselves off to anything new? I'm not saying that I'm the bee's knees here, but Hannover, you're missing out on so much when you refuse to so much as look me in the eyes. There's a world out there, and you're refusing to acknowledge it. Soon you'll be as bad as the Americans.

Oh, and several beers were had. Who'd have guessed?