World Sevens Series should make way for IPL-style event, believes Gavin Hastings
Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens is the best-attended sports event of the year in the UAE, but Hastings wants to see dramatic changes to the sevens format.
The World Sevens Series should be replaced by a worldwide, franchise-based tournament, including a side based in Dubai.
That is the view of Gavin Hastings, the former Scotland captain, who believes an Indian Premier League-style franchise competition could have a transformative effect on the game.
Hastings says the new concept could help speed the spread of the game in new territories, such as the UAE, as well as ease the financial burden on smaller unions like Samoa.
He proposes a 14 or 16 team competition, playing approximately 10 tournaments per season at cities around the globe.
Each side, independently owned by a corporate backer, could have up to 25 players drawn from “a global marketplace” on professional contracts, with a set limit per squad to come from each country.
The idea would limit the number of tournaments played by international representative sides.
“Dubai could play Cape Town, and against Sydney, and I think that is the way forward,” Hastings said. “You could still have the World Cup Sevens, the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, so there are still three opportunities in every four-year cycle to play for your international side.
“I genuinely believe that, whether it be a local here, or an entrepreneurial expat businessman, would want a side that would be the best.
“Do away with the World Series, and have an IPL-style [competition] that travels to all these cities.”
The 2017 Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens, starting on November 30, will be the 48th edition of the competition, which is the best attended event on the annual UAE sporting landscape.
For years, the winning teams in the main event were club sides, before the World Sevens Series, played for by countries, was formalised in 1999.
Hastings believes a franchise representing Dubai, for example, would be easier for people from the city to identify with than the sides in the current format.
“It might only be for six months of the year, but then you could go and grow the game in these countries,” Hastings said. “The guys that play in Dubai could go out into the schools, organise mini tournaments underneath these tournaments.
“Your guys are based here. You sign them up, like in IPL, for a few months and they have a three-year contract. I genuinely think that is the way forward for rugby sevens. Players will make a career out of playing rugby sevens.”
Last year, Ben Ryan, the Englishman who coached Fiji to the first Olympic gold medal, suggested the Fijian sevens side should be set up as a separate commercial franchise, independent from the union.
Back then, he said only Uganda and Samoa players, among the regular series countries, were paid less than Fiji’s.
Hastings believes the new franchise competition would help sevens players improve their market value, as well as ease the financial burden on national governing bodies.
“At the moment, the Samoans, for instance, can barely afford to bring a sevens side out, because there is no money in Samoa,” Hastings said.
“Samoan rugby players are fantastic. If you have 16 franchises, and there were two Samoans per squad playing regularly, there is no [financial] burden on Samoan rugby. Then they could come together for Olympics, Commonwealth and World Cup.”
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
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World Sevens Series standing after Dubai
1. South Africa
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England Test squad
Joe Root (captain), Moeen Ali, James Anderson, Jonny Bairstow (wicketkeeper), Stuart Broad, Jos Buttler, Alastair Cook, Sam Curran, Keaton Jennings, Dawid Malan, Jamie Porter, Adil Rashid, Ben Stokes.
