Commonwealth Games - Rugby 7s

On Day 1 (Thursday 16th March) of the Commonwealth Games Anna and I went to see the Rugby 7s. Rugby 7s is a miniature version of Rugby Union and, from what I can tell with my limited knowledge, both games seem to have very similar rules. The major differences are that in Rugby 7s each game lasts only 14 minutes - two seven minute halves - and each team only has seven players on the field at any given time.
Rugby 7s were held over two days at Telstra Dome, with the preliminary matches played on Thursday and the finals played on Friday. We went to the session on Thursday evening and were treated to 12 matches and over fours hours of running, tackling and try-scoring goodness.
Due to the small number of players on each side having to defend a 70 meter wide field there tends to be a high number of tries scored if the attacking players are fast enough. There were quite a few one sided matches starting with South Africa defeating Uganda 63-7. Uganda came good later in the evening with their 24-14 win over Tonga.
The crowd at Telstra Dome was quite large - close to sell out I guess - and almost every one got caught up in the action. The 'Mexican Wave' was started numerous times and the crowd loved cheering on the underdog - both popular Aussie sporting pastimes really. The largest roars were reserved for the struggling teams. One of the most animated crowd displays started when one of the teams, who were behind on the scoreboard, had the ball on the opposition 22 metre line. They kept passing the ball, trying to avoid being tackled, and with every pass they ended up running backwards. At one point it seemed as if the whole crowd was yelling and pointing "RUN THE OTHER WAY!!!" indicating the direction way they needed to go to score a try. It was a real "Forest 'STOP' Gump" moment. By the time they were tackled they were on their own 22 metre line so it was evident they didn't listen to the crowd at all!

The game which a lot of people were waiting for was the last one scheduled for the evening - Australia v England. It was a much closer game then some of the others and the home crowd was right behind it's team. However, not even Australia's smallest supporter, a soft toy kangaroo placed on the ground in front of the Australian bench, could help the team over the line. The game came down to the last minute with some exciting footy but Australia was beaten 14-12 by England. Oh well, there can only be one winner.

We didn't got to any of the finals sessions on the Friday but the results were as follows:
Gold: New Zealand
Silver: England
Bronze: Fiji