The Jesters used back-to-back tries as the second half wound down to overcome a two point to defeat the USA U-23s 22-12 in the 2022 RugbyTown 7s Cup Final. It was the sixth time that the Jesters have competed in the RugbyTown 7s, and the second time they’ve emerged victorious. The win avenges their third place finish at last year’s tournament, and marked the fifth time they’ve left the RubgyTown 7s with a piece of flare for their trophy case. They’ve finished in third twice, second place once, and have now have two RugbyTown 7s cups.
Sunday was full of exciting finals matches across the board.
The British Columbia Bears were one of the last teams to arrive at Infinity Park for the 2022 RugbyTown 7s, but having fewer training days together didn’t seem to make much of a difference for the Canadian side. The Bears handled business to defeat Team Germany 21-7 to take the RugbyTown Shield back to B.C. Kainoa Lloyd finished the tournament with nine total tries.
In the Bowl Final, Lions 7s capped their RugbyTown 7s debut with a 31-7 victory over the SoCal Griffins. Lions 7s knocked off Gorilla Rugby 19-14 earlier in the day to book their chance to take home some hardware and used a complete performance to do exactly that after an early try from SoCal’s Ryan James had the Lions in a 7-0 hole early. They rattled off 31 unanswered points to make sure they didn’t leave Glendale empty-handed.
The Plate Final was a showdown between two teams making their RugbyTown 7s debut in Casanovas and the Tel Aviv Heat. The evenly-matched sides went well into the second half knotted at 0-0, and it was a penalty try that gave the Tel Aviv Heat the lead in the 11th minute of the match. Casanovas survived their two minutes in the sin bin and Nick Boyer scored the equalizing try to tie the match at seven points apiece and send the match to overtime. After a grueling three-and-a-half minute overtime, Ronan Murphy slipped through a few tacklers and ended the match with a try between the posts to lock up a 14-7 win.
After a 30-minute lightning delay sent the teams back into the locker rooms, the Tsunami Barbarians and NAV 7s gave fans a memorable third place match. An early NAV 7s yellow card helped Tsunami Barbarians jump out to an early 7-0 lead. NAV 7s bounced back with two-straight tries from Gabe Michnya to close the first half and take a 10-7 lead heading into the break. The teams traded tries early, but it was a NAV try late in the second half that shut the door on a Tsunami Barbarians comeback. NAV 7s closed their RugbyTown 7s debut with a 24-12 victory over Tsunami Barbarians and third place in hand.
In total, there were a whopping 353 tries scored by 157 try scorers throughout the 62 matches that occurred over the course of the three day tournament. British Columbia Bears’ wing Kainoa Lloyd and the Ramblin’ Jesters’ Micahel Adlard both finished the tournament with nine total tries, the most of any other player in the tournament. Aren Martin of the Denver 7s Selects wasn’t far behind with eight tries.
If you missed any of the action, the entire tournament replay is available on RugbyTown7s.com.
