Blitzboks handed tough draw for Dubai Sevens

The Blitzboks’ will start their quest for Sevens glory on the toughest route possible after being grouped with Pool A, alongside the defending champions and two other tournament mainstays.

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Following the thrilling conclusion of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, attention now turns to the first event of the revamped and rebranded Sevens Series campaign, which gets underway on 2-3 December with the highly anticipated return of Dubai Sevens.

 World Rugby on Tuesday announced that South Africa, Samoa, New Zealand, and Canada have been assigned to Pool A of the reimagined Sevens campaign.

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The Blitzboks are the defending champions in Dubai, but New Zealand — who won in Sydney, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Singapore and Toulouse to be crowned overall champions — pose the biggest threat to the Springbok Sevens team’s title tournament defence in the desert.

The SVNS series sees a significant change in the team count, reduced from 16 to 12 divided into three groups. The top two from each group advance to the quarter-finals, while the next two highest-point teams proceed to knockout rounds in the revamped format.

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All groups for Dubai SVNS:

A) New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Samoa.
B) Australia, Ireland, Argentina, Spain.
C) France, Fiji, Britain, USA.

Blitzboks’ fixtures and kick-off times:

vs Samoa, 8:50am
vs Canada, 12:58pm
vs New Zealand, 6:44pm

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