Formerly known as the Homeboyz One Night Stand, this year the tournament will for the first time in it's four year history be played over two days at its home, the Nyayo National stadium. The tournament is set to run from Friday afternoon to Saturday, a shift from the traditional Saturday and Sunday dates.
Defending champions KCB headline Pool A and are joined by USIU, Chipu RFC and MKU. The bankers will get their biggest challenge here from Chipu, the Kenya U19 side that are ranked second in the continent.
Hosts Homeboyz top Pool B where they will face recently crowned Nanyuki 10's champions BlakBlad, TUK and Nazarene. The Djs have never won their home tournament, losing in the final for three straight years. They will be hoping that the fourth time will be the charm as they look to replicate the good form they have shown in the concluded sevens' season.
Impala, Machine, Masaku and Vikings make up Pool C, the red shirts of Impala are strong favourites to make it from this pool. Machine and Masaku should offer the biggest challenge.
Pool D pits Quins, Nakuru, Stormers and Multimedia University. The first two will be making their first appearances in the tourney and will hope to make a good start. The two are expected to do battle for first place in this tricky looking Pool.
With mtaa action also set for Friday morning, it is bound to be a great two days of tens rugby.
Last year the tournament suffered from the Safari Sevens 'Lee Ward' effect, having been played on the weekend immediately after Safari sevens. This year though promises to be a more livelier affair with the calendar kinder to the tourney.
I can not finish this post until I throw in a cent or two about the 18th edition of the Safari Sevens that was unfortunately overshadowed by the sad events on the other side of town. Yes the tournament did have it's hickups, the biggest probably being the quality of teams that played over the two days.
The lack of top international sides was mainly due to the dates of the tournament that coincided with three other sevens tournament the Middelburg sevens in South Africa, one in Asia and another in Europe. Future dates need to be set more keenly as we are not yet in a position to compete with the above tournaments that come with a hefty cash prize for the winners.
Apart from that I feel the organisers once again worked tremendously well under the prevailing conditions to give us another successful edition of Africa's premier sevens tournament. With numbers on Saturday soaring
to the 50,000 mark we are surely on the right path to hosting an IRB sevens leg here.
Finally that Australia Renegades sweeper..Rodney Iona was it..now that is what we call a hot stepper..what a joy to watch, hehe alikulisha watu madede bila ubaguzi. Tournament MVP by a good mile or so..
With that ladies and gents, do enjoy the Nairobi 10s its a chance to lipisha the dunda you missed on Sunday during Safari sevens so use it wisely....hehe
KWISHA...Nimeruka Nje!!!
50K on Saturday? Ha! Ha! I was there and there and the number was like half that number at most
ReplyDeleteOh yes I bet you were...in one spot, in the Stadium..if you had taken into account the number outside the pitch area you'd get the other half.
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