SA Schools Rugby have emphasised the importance of sevens rugby with the announcement of a Provincial U/18 and U/13 tournament starting in 2011.
The tournament will be sponsored by well known internet and telephony provider, @lantic. @lantic have been involved with sevens at schools level for the past 5 years.
The first @lantic Provincial sevens tournament will take place at Konka in the Northwest province on 6 & 7 October 2011. Twenty U/18 and 16 U/13 provincial teams will participate.
"This is the first time that we will be presenting such a tournament and it is truly a breakthrough. The tournament can be even better than the Coca-Cola Craven Week. We are very excited about this tournament," so said Lindsay Mould, chairman of the South African Schools Rugby union.
"The provinical tournament will definitely make a contribution to the national sevens team. We have been battling for long to get a feeder system going for our national team. It has always been a problem to bring skills that we see in the 15 man code across to sevens and hope that the skills will add value to the sevens code as well. This tournament will help to create a sevens culture and an opportunity to see the talent of the best sevens players. It all ads value to sevens in South Africa,"said Paul Treu, coach of the Bltizbokke.
The @lantic sevens series have already produced Hoffman Maritz and Branco Du Preez for the Blitzbokke. Both players were identified at the BFN leg of the series at Jim Fouche. Others like Gerhard vd Heever (Bulls), Jacques Erasmus (Lions) and Danie Poolman (Stormers) all honed their skills in the @lantic 7's series.
Players that will be identified at this year's tournament may very well be in action for the Blitzbokke at the Olympic Games in 2016. Treu already contracted Tshotso Mbovane, Paul Jordaan, Craig Berry and William Small-Smith after last year's Craven Week. The @lantic Provinical Sevens tournament will definitely add more names to this list.
"We have been invloved with sevens for the past 5 years through the @lantic 7's series. We identified a gap in the sport at schools level and made an investment in the development of the game. The Provincial Tournament is the pinnacle of this investment and this is what we worked for. This also gives recognition to all the players, coaches, sponsors and promotors that worked extremely hard over the past 5 years to make each and every tournament a success and we thank each and very one of them," said Dederick Venter, Marketing Director of @lantic.
