Commonwealth Games 2018 : Preview

Sri Lanka rugby sevens team will take part in the XXI Commonwealth Games on 14th & 15th April at Robina Stadium in Gold Coast, Australia.

The Format

Men's competition will have 16 teams in four pools and the teams who finish bottom two (2) in each pool will be eliminated. With the top four teams will qualify for the semi finals whilst teams who finish second will play in the classification stage to decide the 5th - 8th place.

The clashes  

Sri Lanka will open the encounter with the gold medal contestant Fiji. Fiji won the Rio Olympics gold and the Hong Kong sevens  last weekend. Fijians are known for their skills, power, pace and decision making and that will be a huge task for the tuskers.

Sri Lanka will take on Wales in their second game. The Welsh team finished 9th in the concluded Hong Kong sevens even after going down to Russia in their pool game, However, they bounced back to beat Samoa 33 - 05 in 9th & 10th play off. 

The final game will be against Uganda where Sri Lanka failed to overcome in the past three meetings in the Commonwealth Games history. Uganda also played at the World Series qualifiers in Hong Kong last weekend who won against Chile (14 - 10) and Georgia (26 - 10) but lost to Japan (24 - 10) and Germany (26 - 00)

What they said

Coach Peter Woods said that "We've been working a lot in terms of our conditioning, obviously this time last year players fitness were way below. 

"Fiji and Wales are in the peak at the world sevens series "all i'm asking from our players is to go out there with right attitude, confidence, aggression and skills.

"In sevens anything can happen on the day the bounce of the ball the referees call but as long as we perform in terms of we are training for with the set pieces, kick off, lineouts with confidence is what we need."

Peter also said that the main goal this year is to win a medal at the Asian Games which will be played in Indonesia in August. This tournament will bring great experience to continue that good performance they did at the Borneo 7s a month ago in Malaysia. 

Captain Sudarshana Muthuthanthri said that "It's a humble and a privilege for us to b part of it and excited to go there and play hard and complete well.

"leading up to the Asian Games this will be a good exposure for the boys looking forward to it."