If you sat through all 18 matches at the Atlanta Sevens yesterday I feel bad for you. You didn’t see a lot of excellent competition. You saw the losing team score a single try or less in 15 of those matches including the first 11 straight. Seven of the first ten matches were shutouts. Half of the matches were decided by 21+ points. Pool A’s six games were decided by margins of 31, 31, 17, 47, 41, and 5 with the first five all shutouts.

The question needs to be asked, how is noncompetitive play like this good for the players? Do players really benefit from playing matches that will never be close instead of playing teams at their level? Is this the kind of tournament that attracts fans? Are people who attend going to be turned off by sitting through blowouts and never give it a second chance?

I think the answer to those questions is clear. This is not helpful to the players, especially those on the teams getting beat badly who need to get experience and play teams on their level. This is not the way to draw in fans who will want to watch competitive matches. The answer is not that hard and was demonstrated in the Olympics this year in the women’s hockey tournament.

Don’t mix all the teams together and disperse them into groups of equal strength. Instead put the best teams all together in a group and the worst teams together in a group. Let the group play be competitive and then seed the knockout round with heavy biasing towards the stronger group.  Here’s a possible grouping. Group A: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Russia. Group B: Brazil, England, Spain, USA. Group C: The non-core teams… this weekend China, Netherlands, Ireland, Japan.

Through the first day of Atlanta and including the results in Dubai, Group A is 11-0-2 against Group B and 10-0 against Group C. They are winning the matchups with Group B by 18.9 points on average and beating Group C teams by 28.6 points on average. Group B is even 7-2-1 against Group C with the only losses to Japan yesterday. The average margin is 14.7 points.

What if those were the groups for group play on Saturday? How great would it be to see a set of matchups between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia? You’d be guaranteed six great high level games for your Saturday schedule. And while the level of play in groups B and C would not be as high at least you’d be matching teams that are on a more even level and hopefully the games would be competitive.

You would set the knockout round by placing all four Group A teams in the top four places and matching them up with B and C teams. If you really wanted to mess with things you could give the top two teams a bye into the semifinals and have two separate six-team tournaments on Sunday. Whatever the approach I just feel like they need to do something to create more balance in this event. It’s great to have a 12-team international tournament, but if it’s not going to be at least competitive from 1-12 find a way to keep teams playing at their level of competition as much as possible.

USA’s Results and Schedule

Not too much to say here as the US was not involved in anything too competitive on Saturday. To start things off the US was shutout 31-0 by Canada in a game that was 19-0 at the half. Then the US played Australia and trailed 12-0 at the break and 17-0 early in the second half. That proved to be the final margin in that one. The US did have a good result against China as they dominated 41-0 including a 24-0 lead at the break. Victoria Folayan scored three tries for the US, Jessica Javelet scored the first two of her career, and Amelia Villines and Rebekah Siebach each had one in the second half. Christy Ringgenberg converted on three of six opportunities while Villines missed the final attempt.

The US finished third in their group and was the second best third-place team so they are in the cup quarterfinals as the #8 seed against Canada to start things off on Sunday. The next match will be against Australia or England. The schedule for those two games is below.

All Times ET

• February 16th – Knockout Round
  • 12 PM – Cup QF – USA vs. Canada
  • 3:06 PM – Plate SF – Will happen if USA loses to Canada. Against loser of Australia-England.
  • 3:50 PM – Cup SF – Will happen if USA beats Canada. Against winner of Australia-England.

After a tough first day hopefully the US can rebound with a good showing against Canada and end the tournament on a real positive note.