Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018: Sri Lanka look set for San Francisco berth

By Shamseer Jaleel

The Sri Lanka Sevens rugby outfit will be have a very good opportunity to represent the country at the Rugby World Cup (RWC) Sevens 2018 which will take place in San Francisco. 

The Sri Lanka outfit will have a three-day training camp in France and will head to Hong Kong and then South Korea for their Sevens tournaments before returning home for the final leg in Colombo. Sri Lanka, who finished second to Hong Kong at last year’s event, will need to repeat or end up winners at the Asian Sevens 2017 to make it to San Francisco. The outfit, which will be selected shortly, will be playing under the watchful eyes of their Head Coach Peter Woods and Inthi Marikar.

Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018 will feature 24 men’s and 16 women’s teams across four days of competition at the AT&T Park in San Francisco. There will be three aspects to the qualification process with teams qualifying by virtue of their finish at RWC Sevens 2013 in Moscow via the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series 2016-17 or through regional competitions. 

In the men’s segment all eight quarterfinalists from RWC Sevens 2013 in Moscow (New Zealand, England, Fiji, Kenya, South Africa, Wales, Australia and France) qualified automatically for the 2018 edition of the tournament as did hosts the US. Under the agreed qualification process, the top four teams outside of those nine at the 2016-17 series will book their place in San Francisco, meaning that Scotland, Canada, Argentina and Samoa have now confirmed their participation.

The remaining 11 places will be filled by teams through regional competitions from June 2017 to April 2018 as follows:

Europe (two teams) – Qualifiers: Russia and Ireland

Asia (two teams), Africa (two teams), North America (one team)

South America (two teams) Oceania (two teams)