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Los Pumas and Springboks 7s impressed on Day 1 of the America Sevens in Mar del Plata, Argentina this afternoon. The two-day Rugby Sevens tournament is the first of the year in the Americas and serves as vital Olympic Games and International Sevens Series preparation for a number of those involved.
Divided into two pools of four Rugby World Cup 2015 Semi Finalists Argentina and South Africa performed well on the opening day to win all three of their respective matches. Argentina joined Americas Rugby Championship rivals Brazil, Chile and the USA in Pool B while South Africa played against Canada, Paraguay and Uruguay in Pool A.
Pool A started with a shock upset as Los Teros 7s completed a 17-14 win over Canada. The Canadians recovered to defeat Paraguay 21-15 but in going down 31-5 against South Africa Canada ended the day with a 1:2 record.
South Africa breezed through Pool A with comfortable wins over all rivals including Uruguay. The 45-5 set-back against the Springboks saw Los Teros 7s responding in impressive fashion by downing Los Yakarés 52-0 in their third and final match of the day. It was sufficient for Uruguay to sit in second position, one ahead of Canada.
Just like in Pool A the opening Pool B fixture also saw a noteworthy upset as Chile defeated the USA 19-15. It was the first of two out of three wins for Los Condores for the day. The Chileans 33-07 win over Brazil came as a rebound after losing 31-14 against Los Pumas.
The host nation’s win over Chile followed a comfortable 26-0 win over Brazil and was followed by a 20-5 victory over the USA who, like Canada, were fielding a developmental team as regulars remained at home in North America.
The USA’s day mirrored that of the Canadians in that the team was on the losing side of two outings, thereby coming away with one victory. The one USA victory was against Brazil who finished bottom of Pool B with three losses. The 2016 Olympic host nation was only able to score two tries for the day, an insufficient number to be competitive in future international competitions this year.
By virtue of finishing bottom of Pool B, Brazil will face South Africa in the Quarter Finals. Similarly, the Pool B wining Argentina will face Pool B’s bottom fourth placed Paraguay in first round of Sunday matches. South will meet north in the remaining two Quarter Finals as Chile meets Canada and Uruguay takes on the USA.
On Sunday a total of twelve matches will be played, the same as that of Day 1. The complete results from the opening day are shown in the image below.
