October 3, 2008

The seeding for the men’s competition will see the 12 IRB Sevens World Series core teams ranked entirely on their cumulative points total over the last two Series and the opening two rounds of the 2008/09 Series, which kicks off next month. The top six teams will each top a competition pool with the teams ranked seven to 12 drawn in the second band.

The remaining 12 qualified teams will then be ranked 13-24 based upon performances in their regional qualifiers and overall playing strength and randomly drawn into the third and fourth bands to complete the structure.

With Rugby World Cup Sevens 2009 being a landmark first for the Women’s Game, the seeding structure is based upon the qualifying tournaments that are taking place across all six IRB regions this year.“Being the first women’s RWC Sevens tournament there is no historical base for assessing the relative strength of each region. The 16 women’s teams have therefore been placed into a banded draw according to their playing strength at the RWC Sevens qualifiers,” said IRB Sevens Manager Beth Coalter.

The qualifiers will be split into four pools of four teams and each of the six regions will have a team represented in the first two bands of the pool structure. England (Europe 1) have been ranked as top seeds for the tournament, with Australia (Oceania 1), North America 1 (tournament to be played later this month), and New Zealand (Oceania 2) second, third and fourth seeds respectively.

Asia 1, Netherlands (Europe 2), South Africa (Africa 1) and Brazil (South America) complete the top eight seeds. The four remaining European qualifiers will then be randomly drawn across the four pools, and the four other regional qualifiers randomly placed to complete each pool. "Once all 24 men’s and 16 women’s teams have been confirmed, the final seedings will be determined with the Rugby World Cup Sevens Draw taking place in Dubai in January," added Coalter.
The Rugby World Cup Sevens 2009 tournament will be played across two pitches at ‘The Sevens’, Emirates Airline’s purpose-built facility, with the men’s competition kicking off at 5pm (local time) on Thursday, March 5, and the inaugural women’s competition on Friday, March 6 at 11am (local time). Both men’s and women’s matches will be played on the main pitch over the three days. The full competition schedule will be announced in due course.

Released by IRB