By RUGBYMag.com staff
(Old White avenges loss from a week ago. photo courtesy of Adam Ingle.)
Atlanta Old White repeated as champion of the South with a second half victory over Life University in the 2010 South Sevens Championship held at the Tennessee Rugby Park in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Life University led 5‐0 at the half on the strength of a Fidelis Odoh try, but Old White brought on Richard Kanda at the break who touched down two long distance tries to earn the come-from-behind 12‐5 victory. Both teams advance to the USA Rugby National Sevens Championship on August 14 in San Francisco, California, and are the first to do so this summer. Old White enters nationals in Pool C as the sixth seed, and Life Pool B as the seventh.
The tournament was only Life’s second 7s competition of the summer, winning HotLanta 7s the week prior. Because of long postseason runs by both of their 15s sides, Life allowed its players a break – forcing the start of 7s back, too.
“We’ve just been training at our place,” said Life’s 7s coach and captain Ben Jones. “When 7s season starts it’s break for our players, and a lot of them go home to get a bit of family time after a long 15s season. So we played just one (tournament), did what we needed to do – qualified for nationals – and we’re hoping to pick up a few live scrimmages at our place to get ready for San Francisco next month.”
Jones said he’s not dwelling over the loss to Old White. Having so little time to prepare and play live against other teams, Jones took the opportunity to try some different combinations in the South final.
“We just tried an experimental lineup in the final as we already knew that we qualified, so we tried a couple guys who didn’t get very many minutes earlier in the day, just to have a look at them and get them a bit of fitness,” added Jones. “I believe that was the occasion with both teams, but as it happened, they were better than us for that time, but we’re not overly worried about Old White.”
En route to the title, Old White dispatched of New Orleans in one semifinal while Life University outpaced Daytona in the other to reach the championship match. Life’s Jones ran across two tries and Tui Osborne scored and converted all three tries to lead the Running Eagles over Daytona 21‐14. Old White used two opportunistic tries by Leslie Mango to hold off the very elusive New Orleans 17‐7.