adminJeffrey Murimbechi Sports Correspondent
DRAGONS 1 emerged as the champions at the Zimbabwe Summer Sevens Series after an epic due against Old Hararians at Old Georgians Sports Club on Saturday night.The Dragons ran out 29-17 winners in the final, having earlier accounted for the same opponents 17-14 in the group stages of the tournament.
Winning the series is testament of the Dragons 1’s recent dominance in local sevens rugby after previously winning the Spar & Lion Lager Summer 7s rugby sevens tournament in November.
Old Boys , however, remain top contenders for the throne as they have been twice the finalists. The third and fourth place play-off between Harare Sports Club and Dragons 2 did not take place as both teams complained about exhaustion, due to the compact schedule of matches which came consecutively throughout most of the day. Mabvuku Rugby Club won the Harare ghetto battle by claiming fifth place in the series after beating arch-rivals Mbare 7-0.
Zimbabwe Cheetahs team manager Steve McDonald said that the there is value in actual on-field preparation in game situations as this will help the Cheetahs in their upcoming international series featuring two Russian sides in Harare.
“What this series means to us is that the guys have the ability to prepare for future tournaments by getting game time, our focus right now is the Harare International Sevens and this was a good opportunity for guys to get ready in the Sevens setup.
“It means absolutely nothing and it is completely irrelevant to us who won the tournament today, it is about the minutes that players spend on the field, it is about contact and other elements on how each player played the game,” said Steve McDonald.
The series also had a development aspect which featured two national women’s teams, two teams from the Mbare Academy, Mabvuku Under-16 and Chitungwiza 1. Mbare Academy’s exploits against the women’s national team select side were the highlight of the development festival.
The spirited teenagers from the high-density suburb went shoulder to shoulder with the more experienced women; they did not hold back on aggression and showed maturity in ball retention, distribution and well co-ordinated defence.
“The Mbare Academy game was tough, those boys were a bit more aggressive than we were, they were giving us very hard tackles and they surely tested our offense, they managed to close us down and made it difficult to penetrate but after a while we worked our way around them.
“Our second game against them was much better against them and we now have to work harder on our combinations,” said Precious Pezani from the women’s select side.
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