The Rugby Europe sevens season gets underway in the coming days in some style.
In Makarska, Croatia, between Friday and Sunday the first leg of the men’s and women’s Championship Series 2024 will take place and, over the same days, the men’s and women’s Conference standalone event will be going on in Belgrade, Serbia.
With just two legs of action in the Championship Series 2024 - the second leg being in Hamburg, Germany at the end of the month (28-30 June) - all teams involved know they need to pick up vital points in these opening events to have any hopes of being crowned the European champions.
And, with just one event in Conference 1, there is no room for error.
As a result, as if sevens was not fast and exciting enough, it will be all go from tie one in each event with every match counting.
With some of the Championship teams building up to the Olympics and coming fresh off the SVNs circuit the quality will be high.
Last year France were crowned the women’s European champions with Ireland taking the men’s crowd.
France women are in Pool A for the Croatia event alongside Ireland, Türkiye (newly promoted with Ukraine) and Czechia while Spain, second overall last year, are in Pool B with Germany, Belgium and Ukraine.
Great Britain were third overall in 2023 and they are in Pool C with Poland, Italy and Portugal the sides making up the 12-teaam event.
Georgia, Germany and Croatia (newly promoted with Ukraine) will be the opponents for Ireland in men’s Pool A in Makarska with last year’s runners-up France playing Portugal, Italy and Ukraine.
Pool C in the 12-team event is made up of last year’s third placed side Spain, Great Britain, Belgium and Lithuania.
Both events run from Friday to Sunday.
Over in Belgrade, there are two pools in the eight-team Conference 1 women’s event.
Moldova, Lithuania, Malta and Estonia will battle it out in Pool A with Pool B being made up of Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and Luxembourg.
The Conference 1 men’s tournament features nine sides so they are in smaller groups of three.
Denmark, Finland and Malta make up Pool A, Bulgaria, Andorra and home favourites Serbia are in Pool B and Austria, Norway and San Marino are in Pool C.
The women’s event is on Friday and Saturday with the men’s one running over Saturday and Sunday. The two best teams of each competition will be promoted to Trophy division, where the last Men team will be relegated to Conference 2.
All games of the week-end will be live on rugbyeurope.TV and the following broadcasters:
- TVP (Poland): Online coverage on TVP Sport mobile and smart tv apps and www.sport.tvp.pl
- Ceska Televize (Czechia): Online coverage CT Sport Plus for Czech national team games: https://sport.ceskatelevize.cz
- LT (Lithuania): LRT PLUS channel for Lithuanian national team games - www.lrt.lt
- RTVE: Online coverage on RTVE PLAY platform - for Spanish national team games + the final
- SPORTSKA.TV (Croatia)
By Gary Heatly
