The 2019–20 World Rugby Sevens Series was the 21st annual series of

rugby sevens Rugby sevens (commonly known simply as sevens, and originally seven-a-side rugby) is a variant of rugby union in which teams are made up of seven players playing seven-minute halves, instead of the usual 15 players playing 40-minute halves. R ...

tournaments for national men's rugby sevens teams. The Sevens Series has been run by

World Rugby World Rugby is the governing body for the sport of rugby union. World Rugby organises the Rugby World Cup every four years, the sport's most recognised and most profitable competition. It also organises a number of other international competit ...

since 1999–2000. In March 2020, World Rugby postponed all remaining tournaments in the series due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. The events in London and Paris were postponed provisionally until September, preceding the Singapore and Hong Kong events previously postponed until October. On 30 June, the remaining four rounds of the series was cancelled which meant that

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

was awarded the title by 11 points over second-placed

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

Format

Sixteen nations competed at each event, drawn into four pools of four teams each. Following the pool matches at each tournament, the top eight teams (two teams from each pool) played off for a Cup, with gold, silver and bronze medals also awarded to the first three teams. The bottom eight teams after the pool matches played off for the lower-ranked placings from ninth to sixteenth at each tournament. The winner of the series was determined by the overall points standings gained across all events in the season.

Challenger Series and the COVID-19 pandemic

World Rugby announced in December 2019 that there would be a feeder competition to the Sevens Series consisting of sixteen teams that would play two sevens events in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

, determining the final eight teams to play in a playoff-style event at the

Hong Kong Sevens The Hong Kong Sevens ( zh, t=香港國際七人欖球賽, link=no) is a rugby sevens tournament held annually in Hong Kong on a weekend in late March or early April. Considered the premier tournament on the World Rugby Sevens Series competiti ...

. The final winner would be promoted to the World Rugby Sevens Series and replace the invitational side in the Sevens Series. As a result of the

, World Rugby postponed the Sevens Series and Challenger Series seasons to be completed at a later date in the year before subsequently cancelling the season entirely. Because of both competitions seasons being cancelled, the final playoff in Hong Kong to decide the team who would be promoted to the Sevens Series would not be decided and the team with the highest points tally would be the promoted team.

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, an invited team to five of the six Sevens Series events was promoted having accumulated thirty-nine points in total, three points clear at the top of the table.

Core teams

The fifteen "core teams" qualified to participate in all series events for 2019–20 were: Ireland joined as a core team for the first time after winning the 2019–20 World Series qualifier held in Hong Kong. They replaced Japan who were relegated after finishing as the lowest-placed core team in 2018–19. However, Japan will play in several tournaments as the wild card team in preparation to host the Olympic tournament.

Tour venues

The official schedule for the 2019–20 World Rugby Sevens Series was: Events in Singapore and Hong Kong were originally scheduled to be played in April 2020 but were postponed due to health concerns relating to the

and rescheduled to October 2020. In June 2020, World Rugby cancelled all four remaining rounds of the tournament (Singapore, Hong Kong, England and France) due to the pandemic.

Standings

Official standings for the 2019–20 series: Source
World Rugby
/small> Note:

Players

Scoring leaders

Updated
11 March 2020

References

Sources

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:2019-20 World Rugby Sevens Series World Rugby Sevens Series

World Rugby Sevens Series The SVNS, known as the HSBC SVNS for sponsorship reasons, is an annual series of international rugby sevens tournaments run by World Rugby featuring national sevens teams. Organised for the first time in the 1999–2000 season as the IRB World ...