World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series coming to South Africa
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Details of the World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series 2023 have been announced with a pair of three-day combined men’s and women’s events taking place at Markötter Stadium in Stellenbosch on 20-22 and 28-30 April, 2023.
The winner of the 12-team women’s Challenger Series will gain the ultimate prize of automatic promotion to the Sevens World Series 2024 – the pinnacle of international rugby sevens.
The 12 women’s teams competing are the Springbok Women’s Sevens, Belgium, China, Colombia, Czechia, Hong Kong, Madagascar, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Thailand, and a team from South America yet to be confirmed.
The winner of the men’s Challenger Series, which also features 12 teams, will enter a four team play-off at the HSBC London Sevens in May 2023 together with the teams placed 12th-14th after 10 rounds of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, with the winner of the play-off achieving Sevens World Series 2024 status.
The 12 men teams are Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Jamaica, Korea, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
The teams qualified via their ranking positions within their relevant regional competitions and the pool draw will take place once the full team line-ups are confirmed in early 2023.
The tournament replicates the Olympic Games competition format, with the 12 teams drawn into three pools of four. The top two from each as well as the two best third-placed finishers will qualify for the knockout stages with quarter-finals and semi-finals leading to the bronze and gold medal matches.
The Challenger Series was introduced in February 2020 to boost the development of rugby sevens across the globe and provide a clear promotion pathway to reach the pinnacle HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.
Japan were the inaugural men’s champions after topping the cumulative rankings from the two rounds hosted in Chile and Uruguay in 2020. The first women’s competition was scheduled to take place in Stellenbosch in March 2020 but had to be cancelled due to the onset of the global pandemic.
"The improvement across the board in Sevens Rugby over the last few years, and the competitiveness between all teams, makes for a superb product and we can't wait to deliver these tournaments in Stellenbosch.
“With Rugby Sevens part of the Olympic Games, it will be a big occasion for all the teams involved and we would love nothing more than to see our own Springbok Women's Sevens team play in Paris in 2024 – this could be the first step to achieving that dream.”
The inaugural event on the Challenger Series for women was supposed to be hosted in Stellenbosch in 2020, but it was cancelled due to the COVID-pandemic.
