More nations for World Series

another chance to prove their worth in the biggest annual Sevens competition.
Over the past few years, the Cheetahs have gradually been making progress on the World Series where they are now taking part in five of the nine tournaments as they travel to Dubai, South Africa, Hong Kong, Glasgow and London.
But over the past years the Cheetahs only played in three main tournaments and it was early this year that they were invited to take part at the London and Glasgow back-to-back tournaments.
It is also in Europe that the Cheetahs hope to make it second time lucky as they have always wanted to be part of the elite Sevens rugby playing group. Cheetahs manager and former Zimbabwe Rugby Union president Bruce Hobson believes that they have a better chance to qualify for World Series core membership compared to the previous qualifiers.
“I feel that it is going to be much easier for us to qualify as a core team next year because there will be eight teams fighting for the three spots because last time we had tough competition against teams like Portugal,” Hobson said.
The qualifiers will be held in May next year during the Glasgow-London tournaments and the Cheetahs have the advantage that most of their players would have spent a long time together.
With the plan that the Cheetahs will be in a professional academy set-up as they are set to get six moths contracts between January and June, Hobson hopes that the conditioning and focus will be better.
The contracts will not only be offered to the current crop of Sevens players as the technical team led by coach Gilbert “Gidza” Nyamutsamba is also looking at the future of the game after the World Cup.
“Between now and the Olympics in 2016 there are a lot of tournaments that are going to take place there and we believe that by the time we go for the Olympic Games, Zimbabwe would have qualified as a World Seven Series core team.”
Zimbabwe will start their World Series campaign by travelling to Dubai at the end of November before connecting to Port Elizabeth in South Africa to round up this year’s games.
The Cheetahs will then travel to Hong Kong next year where the top five non-core members will qualify to play at the London-Glasgow back-to-back tournaments and these will be joined by regional winners to bring the number of teams to 12.
And it is here that they will have another chance to become a core member.
“So the top five non-core members and the bottom three core members will have a separate group to make it an eight team competition and we believe we can fight our way to becoming a core member then.
“So given that the European tournaments will come in at a time when most of our players will be contracted and training together, we hope that we will do well there as that will be our last big stage to prepare for the World Cup.”
But to start their preparations for the Dubai and Port Elizabeth Sevens, the Sevens Summer Series will get underway on Saturday at Old Georgians ad this is used to keep the players match fit after the traditional XV season. This will also be followed by the Spar International Sevens that is expected to be hosted twice every year especially at the time the national team will be preparing for the big regional and international tournaments.