Impress your mates this weekend with some interesting facts about the game:
IT'S OLD AND IT'S SCOTTISH
The story goes that Rugby Sevens was initially conceived in 1883 by two butchers from Melrose in Scotland names Ned Haig and David Sanderson. They came up with the idea to raise some funds for their local rugby club.
Not all quite agree however. With some historians pointing out that although the idea to have seven players per side may have started in Melrose, it was not the version of limited player rugby. These point out that the first type of 'short form' rugby began with a six-a-side tournament in Huddersfield in 1879.
RULES, STILL RULE
According to some accounts from that 'first' Sevens tournament, Haig and Sanderson were members of the Melrose team that eventually won that very first competition. Apparently Sanderson (who captained the side) led the Melrose team from the field victorious after scoring the first try in extra time. Today, the World Sevens Series still follows the rule that the first team to score in extra time is the winner of the match.
FROM SCOTLAND TO THE WORLD
Sevens' popularity spread north throughout Scotland thanks to the success of that very first tournament, but it was only in the 1920s and 30s that it spread further afield, with evidence that 1921 was the year Sevens rugby took off internationally with the North Shields Sevens at Percy Park in England and the Buenos Aires Sevens. There are some who believe that Nelson in New Zealand, was the first place to stage a School Sevens tournament outside Scotland around the turn of the century, although little evidence exists.
OLYMPIC GLORY
Ten years after the inception of the IRB Sevens World Series in 1999, in October 2009 in Copenhagen the members of the International Olympic Committee voted almost unanimously to accept Rugby Sevens into the sporting programme of the Olympic Games for 2016 and 2020.
