England Sevens win Challenge Trophy in Moscow
- England beat Wales 21-17 and take home Challenge Trophy
- England earlier beat Poland in semi-final
England secured the Challenge Trophy and ninth place after beating Wales 21-17 in the final of the first tournament of the 2017 Rugby Europe Sevens Grand Prix Series which took place in Moscow over the weekend.
They found themselves in the Challenge Trophy contest after coming third in their pool after day one of the tournament where they defeated Belgium but suffered losses to Portugal and France.
England fielded a youthful side for this weekend’s competition, with Simon Amor heralding this as an opportunity to identify the next generation of talent to come through the England Sevens pathway.
Commenting on the team’s performance in Moscow, England Sevens academy coach Warren Abrahams, said: “The boys worked extremely hard and the attitude, effort and desire to look after each other and put the team first was fantastic this weekend.
“It’s a very young group that we have out here so we are naturally going to make some errors but it’s a very exciting learning journey for all of these guys.
“We’ve learned some tough lessons over the past two days but the boys showed that if they do the simple things well they can put any team under pressure – they demonstrated that against France on Saturday.”
In the Challenge Trophy semi-final, England clinched a 24-10 victory over Poland. In day one of the tournament England defeated Belgium 19-10 in their opening game but lost 10-29 to Portugal and 21-26 to France.
Looking ahead to the second round of the European competition in Lodz, Poland next weekend Abrahams added: “There’s a huge amount of exciting potential in this group and for them to be able to continue to improve they will need to understand how to express themselves individually within the game plan and then learn how gel these individual components together to work successfully as a group.”
England Sevens squad for Moscow:
Alex Davis
Cameron Cowell
Callum Sirker
Jordan Ainslie
Henry Martin
Tom Ffitch
Will Glover
Fergus Guiry
Will Wilson (University of Oxford)
Yaree Fanitini (Northumbria University)
Mason Tonks (Gloucester)
Ryan Olowofela (Leicester Tigers)
Stages two to four of the Rugby Europe Sevens Grand Prix Series will take place as follows:
- Stage 2: Lodz (Poland), 10-11 June
- Stage 3: Clermont-Ferrand (France – Comité d’Auvergne), 1-2 July
- Stage 4: Mitsubishi Motors Exeter 7s (England), 15-16 July
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