WORLD RUGBY HAS confirmed that the remaining legs of the women’s and men’s 2020 World Sevens Series have been cancelled due to the “ongoing and dynamic global nature of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
It means that the Ireland’s men’s 7s side’s first season as a core team has been cut short four legs early and that they finish in 10th position overall.
Tullamore man Jordan Conroy finishes the season as the top try-scorer on the men’s Series with 30, well clear of second best Carlin Isles on 22. Ireland’s Terry Kennedy was fifth on the list with 17 tries.
The Ireland women’s team also finish 10th with the remaining three legs of their Series cancelled.
New Zealand have been awarded both the women’s and men’s titles courtesy of being top of the standings when the Covid-19 outbreak halted the Series.
Meanwhile, Wales have been spared relegation from the men’s Series and World Rugby has confirmed that Japan will be promoted as the 16th core team for 2021 after they topped the rankings of the Challenger Series following two completed events this year.
There will be no promotion to the women’s Series this year as the Challenger Series event originally scheduled for March in South Africa was cancelled.
World Rugby say that as a result of all of these amendments, “seedings for the Tokyo Olympic Games will be adapted to include results from the 2021 Series to ensure they provide the most robust and accurate representation of current form when the Games commence in July 2021.”
Ireland’s men’s team kicked off their core-team status on the Series with a 12th place finish in Dubai last December before improving to earn a quarter-final spot in Cape Town the following weekend.
They finished seventh in Sydney and sixth in Los Angeles and would have hoped to make more progress in the four remaining legs of this year’s Series. Instead, they will have to wait until next year to make their mark on the circuit again.
The women’s team, meanwhile, reached the quarter-finals of the Glendale 7s back in October but had a string of 10th and 11th-placed finishes in the other four legs of their Series that were played.
