Last weekend saw Shetland Rugby Club holding their annual BP Mid-Summer Sevens Rugby Tournament. This was the 22nd time the event has been held, and the third time it has been sponsored by BP and SVT.
The event kicked off on the Friday evening with the raising of the Rugby Club’s marquee, and a gentle touch rugby tournament, just to stretch off tired limbs, and give some of the younger players and new players a chance to run through some practices and moves in preparation for the big competition on Saturday.
Concerns about the un-seasonal weather soon vanished as Saturday developed into a perfect day for the cut down game – cool, refreshing and brisk. The main tournament was run as a six team round robin event, after a late call off from an Aberdeen team, and an epidemic of a stomach bug running through the SVT team and the SRT team. These two truncated teams agreed to amalgamate, and played under the name of The HRT’s. At that point, before a ball had been kicked, tournament favourites were expected to be the young, fast team from Orkney - runners-up last time - or the young fast team from Shetland. The dark horses were the Inverness Leisure Team, who, according to rumour was made up of Rugby Sevens specialists! An exciting day was in prospect! The other teams hoping to upset the form book were the Shetland Baa Baas and the Xiles – a team of Shetland students studying on the mainland.
The tournament kicked off at Midday, and with only 7 minutes each way, and with the games controlled, in an excellent spirit, by referees P Woods, C Hamer and W Leslie, the first part of the afternoon seemed to fly by.
Each team would have to play all the other teams, so there were five rounds of games to be played. At the end of 3 rounds, the team points were Orkney on 9, Inverness on 5, Shetland Select on 9, The Xiles on 3, the Baa Baas on 7, and The HRTs on 3. At this point, the early favourites were shining through, Inverness were having less impact than expected, and the Shetland Baa baas were forging ahead into contention.
The tournament took a well earned break then, to welcome the 9 visiting Jarl Squads to this rugby extravaganza. Many of the had never witnessed this form of rugby, and many a hardy Viking was seen, with burger and refreshment in hand, leaning on the fence and admiring the effort and skills on show.
With the fourth round of games completed, Orkney and the Shetland Select were still on track for a grandstand ‘final’, and the Baa Baas and Inverness were still locked in battle for 3rd and 4th places.
The final round saw Inverness cruise past the Xiles, to end on 9 points, and perhaps rueing their weaker performances in rounds 2, 3 and 4. Meanwhile, the Shetland Baa Baas had to beat the HRTs to clinch that vital 3rd place ahead of the visitors from Inverness.
The HRT team put on a spirited performance, but their lack of experience and guile was their Achilles heel. The Baa Baas cruised past them to finish on 11 points, and 3rd in the Tournament.
As if it had all been planned, the last match was between Orkney and Shetland, with both teams on full points so far, something had to give.
The game under way, and right away Orkney got into their stride. The play was end to end, lung-bursting effort ftom both teams, but the final whistle brought the play on Saturday to a close, with Orkney coming out winners by 24 – 7.
Club president then said a few words to the crowd, offering a vote of thanks to the 3 hard working referees, BP, who sponsored the week-end, and all those behind the scene s for all their hard work to make this event such a success, with hopefully, more to come on Sunday. He then asked Mike Killean, a club member as well as the representative from BP/SVT to present the trophy to the jubilant Orkney players. A reception, presentation event and dinner was then held in the Clickimin Centre, and then onto the legendary Rugby Sevens Disco to perform a suitable ‘warm down’, as all true athletes should.
Sunday dawned cold, wet and windy, and did not auger well for the Junior match, the Traditional Survivors game, and the sports events that were organised. As the wind and wet increased, the decision was made to hold over the junior matches till later in the summer, and to expand the event into a 10-a-side tournament, along the same lines as the Adult event. Paul Woods will be in touch in a few weeks. So keep up your fitness levels, boys!
With the rest of the afternoon spent huddling round the barbeque for warmth and lashing the marquee down, the visiting teams wended their way to the boat for the trip home, and the SRFC committee starts early preparations for next year’s event!
Thanks again to BP and Northlink for their support of this sporting event.
If you are interested in this version of the game, or the full size version, come along to Summer training on a Monday evening, at 6.30pm, or check www.shetlandrugby.com for details in the guestbook.