Emirates Airline London Sevens

The Emirates Airline London Sevens is back with a bang at Twickenham on the weekend of 23rd & 24th May. England’s only leg of the IRB World Sevens series involves 16 top international sides and 44 matches of fast paced, thrilling and entertaining sevens rugby.


So rugby is normally played with 15 players on each side but sevens – as the name suggests – is a shortened version of the game with just seven players on each side.

It’s a bit like 20:20 cricket in that matches are shorter and are often high scoring. Each half is just seven minutes with a one minute break in the middle. The final is ten minutes each way.

Squads of 12 participate but only three subs can be used during the game (therefore leaving 2 on the bench for each game).


Argentina, Australia, England, Fiji, France, Kenya, New Zealand, Samoa, Scotland, South Africa, United States, Wales, Canada, Portugal, Georgia, Italy (TBC).

The game of sevens actually derives from Melrose in Scotland where legend has it the local butcher couldn’t find enough players to play rugby one weekend so played with just seven players. The size of the pitch however, is just the same as XV’s which means sevens players have to be fit, as they have to cover the same amount of space but with half the number of players.

Sevens rugby is often quick with plenty of tries. There are still scrums and line outs but with just three players in a scrum on each side.

Perhaps most importantly sevens rugby is often unpredictable. Games are over so quickly that anything can happen and there are plenty of upsets in the world of sevens when the so called favourites lose out to the lesser known teams