When the smoke from the fireworks show that capped off the first day of the 2019 RugbyTown Sevens settled on Friday night, there remained just three unbeaten teams.
In Pool A, U.S. All Army, the winners of six-straight U.S. Military Rugby Championships, stood atop the military bracket with a 3-0 record. They defeated Navy, the Marines, and the Coast Guard by a combined score of 131-10 to head into Sunday in first place. They’ll take on second-place Air Force on Saturday in both team’s last match before the Military Championship. While Army has a place in the Military Championship locked up, Air Force, Coast Guard and Navy will spend the early part of Saturday fighting for a chance to be the team that ends Army’s six-year run.
Despite the +121 points that Army put up on Day 1, it was the leaders of Pool B that played the closest to blemish-free rugby out of the 20 teams that competed on Friday. The Ramblin’ Jesters hung 136 points on their opponents while only allowing one unconverted try to the North American Lions in what was their third and final match of the day. The Jesters will take on the Sacramento Eagles on Saturday afternoon as they try to escape pool play with a perfect 4-0 record.
While no team escaped Pool C unscathed, Tiger Rugby emerged from Day 1 atop the standings. In what is shaping out to be one of the most tightly contested pools of the tournament, Tiger Rugby picked up wins over Celtic Barbarians and second-place SoCal Griffins but fell 26-17 to Denver 7s in their second match of the day. Tiger Rugby will take on Tsunami Sport Barbarians in their fourth match of pool play on Saturday. The door is wide open for any team to make a run in Pool C on Saturday as only three points separate Tiger Rugby from the last place Tsunami Sport Barbarians, who will play two matches during the second day of the tournament.
While no team lit up the scoreboard in Pool D, CCIG Life West used a complete performance over the Collegiate All-Americans and picked up a thrilling 22-21 win over Lomaiviti USA in the final match of the day to improve to 2-1 and claim the top of the pool. The only team in Pool D to escape unscathed was NOLA Gold 7s, who sit in third place because they only played two matches but picked up wins over second-place Marlborough Compeed 7s and first place CCIG Life West. They’ll finish pool play against Lomaiviti USA and Collegiate All-Americans on Saturday afternoon.
In all, the first day of the tournament saw the Ramblin’ Jesters score the most points (131) while also allowing the least amount of points (5). 1,147 total points were scored over the 10 hours of rugby that was played.
Come witness the next 1,000+ points live by purchasing your tickets here or, if you can’t make it to the pitch, tuning in for the stream on rugbytown7s.com.
