May 1994: Atlantis at Benidorm Sevens - and other notes

(Atlantis tournament #36)
Emil Signes
JUNE 1994
June 15, 2013

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Notes of 2013:  Looking for original stuff I wrote on this tournament, I've found articles on my computer saved on now non-existent software; they've been tough to decipher but easier than retyping from the Rugby Magazine article.  What follows is the following:

1-The Benidorm piece of an article in Rugby called "Three Weeks on the 1994 Iberian Sevens Circuit," including
2-a prescient introduction to the article, an
d
3-a letter I wrote to the team prior to the tournament; including a perhaps interesting - if very dated - coaching commentary from the "keep away" days of sevens.

My "prescient" introduction.

This is how I began the Rugby article on the 1994 "Iberian Circuit," which included the Benidorm, Lisbon and Madrid Sevens.  This was in the days when no rugby, let alone sevens, was professional.  And sevens certainly wasn't considered serious - nor even a potentially professional sport - outside a tiny cult following.

"There are those who refuse to take sevens seriously.  I would ask them to look at my passport, issued in 1986: 8 stamps to Scotland, 7 to Hong Kong, 5 to Australia, 3 to Spain, 2 to Ireland, 2 to Italy, 1 to Fiji, 1 to New Zealand, 1 to Portugal - many with expenses paid ... and all because I've taken sevens seriously.

"In fact, I keep thinking, 'if only sevens were a professional sport ...'

"The sevens circuits are here - trivialize them at your own risk."

I then noted a motley group of sevens tournaments around the world that was beginning to take the shape of a circuit.

Rugby became professional in 1995.  The IRB sevens circuit, and eventually the emergence of sevens as a full-time profession, came with the beginning of what would soon be called the World Series of Sevens a few years later.  Prescient indeed ... (of course I had already been writing these things 15 years earlier).

Atlantis reaches semifinals of Benidorm Sevens (July 1994 Rugby)

The 1994 Heineken Benidorm Sevens represented the 17th tournament abroad in which the invitational side Atlantis has participated.  As it has done on more than half of those occasions, it completed the tournament with a winning record, going out with a semifinal loss to eventual champion Ukraine.

Atlantis

Atlantis is an invitational sevens club with multifaceted goals.  At the domestic level, we are trying to improve the level of sevens in the US by mixing sides of experienced players and novices.  For top international tournaments, however, we try to assemble teams representing the best the US has to offer.

This year's squad consisted of forwards

Adrian Scott, Old Blue (NY)
Keith McLean, Philadelphia/Whitemarsh & East
Brian GallagherÑMaryland Exiles
Mark Herbert, NOVA & Canterbury (NZ)
Rich Matiszik, Milwaukee and Midwest

and backs

Dave Priestas, Bethlehem, East and US
Charlie Wilkinson, NOVA, East and US
Marty O'Connor, South Jersey, East and US
Lou Holokaukau, Bethlehem and Pacific Coast
Jeff Damron, Washington

Besides me, non-playing members of our party were Bob Davis, team manager, and Bill Gardner, who was responsible for all breaches of diplomacy.

The Benidorm Sevens

History.  The Benidorm Sevens began in 1987 as a onebracket mixture of highly talented invitational sides and lower division sides from Spain and elsewhere.  In 1992, the year before the firstever Rugby World Cup Sevens, Benidorm took its level several notches higher, attracting several national sides including the US, as well as Fiji and Samoa who fought it out in a brilliant 1615 (Fiji winners) final.

The 1992 tournament also featured a highlevel women's bracket, won by Atlantis over the Saracens.

In the last two years, however, Benidorm's financial resources have diminished, and this year neither of the island teams were there.  The organizer, Ignacio D†vila has, however, partially at least due to his own personal efforts and willpower, managed to keep the level of the tournament high and its character interesting.  The tournament continues to be split into 3 brackets of 12 teams each: international, senior club and junior club.

With invitational teams from the US, Spain, Uruguay, Wales, and Ireland, full national sides from Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, China (AKA Taiwan) and Hungary, as well as a West Indies selection (Bermuda, Trinidad, Martinique, + others), the tournament has taken on an interesting characteristic all its own.  In addition, 1994's event was seen from the beginning  correctly  as being a wideopen tournament.

Atmosphere.  The Benidorm Sevens is quintessential Spain: an atmosphere of chaos pervades the entire organization, and one wonders throughout the week what will really happen on game day. . . But, based on my 3 experiences there, somehow the tournament goes on, for the most part on time and without any tragic consequences.  "Spain is different in everything," claims a character in a contemporary Spanish play, "and that is the will of God."

Some are frustrated by Benidorm's somewhat "loosey goosey" organization; I quite like it (the Spanish in me understands).  Furthermore, sharing accommodations, practices, etc., with Uruguayans, Chinese, Russians, Latvians, Trinidadians, etc., as well as playing against them and partying with them afterwards is something that just doesn't happen too often in an average lifetime.

Nor does the friendship we made with the Uruguayans, who accompanied us on a 6hour bus trip to Madrid and on several social occasions later in our stay.

The town of Benidorm itself may appeal to those content to party in English speaking neighborhoods: described as "working class Yorkshire with sun," it is a tourist town on the Mediterranean catering to English tourists who can't bear leaving their fish and chips, bitter ale, etc.  Except for Taff's Bar, a Welsh pub owned by rugbymad Reg Jones, I try to avoid the English speaking establishments of Benidorm whenever possible. (My father's home town of Gata, 20 miles away, once again provided an opportunity to visit the real Spain).

Atlantis

Atlantis was in a bracket with Latvia and the Dublin Wanderers, a first division Irish side whose home pitch is Lansdowne Road.  Latvia, although an unknown name to most in the rugby world, had nevertheless qualified for the 1993 World Cup Sevens by defeating Russia in a tournament to see which nation would represent the former USSR.

Although falling behind Latvia 12-0, Atlantis scrapped back in the second half on tries by Marty O'Connor and Brian Gallagher, both converted by O'Connor (final = 14-12).

Dave Priestas joined O'Connor and Gallagher to lead Atlantis to a 17-7 win over the Wanderers, putting them into the quarterfinals, where its opponent was the Welsh President's VII, a developmental squad selected by the Welsh RFU.  The twoman show continued, as Gallagher (2 tries) and O'Connor (try and 2 conversions) tallied all the points in a 19-10 victory.

This put Atlantis into the semifinals, where it was the only representative of the "West" (the other semifinalists being Russia, Ukraine and China).

Ukraine v Atlantis

After defeating Uruguay and the West Indies in its bracket, the Ukraine knocked off Arquitectura, a Spanish club side playing under the name of "Spain" (the real Spain, however, was in the process of losing 54-0 to Wales in a 15s World Cup qualifier that weekend).

Ukraine defeated Atlantis in the key areas of ballwinning and speed, and took a relatively easy 28-7 victory (Dave Priestas the only try).

Finals: Ukraine vs Russia

Russia, a semifinal victor over China, went ahead of Ukraine 14-0, but the Ukraine, a close loser to Samoa in the 1993 finals, was destined to win this tournament and scored three unanswered tries in the second half to notch a 19-14 victory.

Plate Championship: Latvia made it an all former USSR day notching the Plate.

Kickoffs: Kickoffs can be a nightmare if your kicker can't put the ball regularly where it needs to be (in the air long enough for both teams to contest), and drop kickoffs have lowered the number of kickers who can do that.  Out of 13 Atlantis kickoffs, 6 led to opponents' scrums, and only one of the 13 was positioned to be contested evenly.

Atlantis scoring totals:
Name
Tries
Conv
Pts
O'Connor
3
6
27
Gallagher
4
0
20
Priestaas 2
0
10
Total
9
6
57


1995.  For those interested in the 1995 tournament, it will take place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 19-20-21, and is open to all levels of competition. 

A Benidorm Masters (35 and over) tournament (fifteens) will take place on April 22-23, 1995.  Contact information:

Ignacio Davila
Plaza Castelar, No 6
03570 Villajoyosa, Alicante 
SPAIN
Phone: 011-34-6-589-4072
FAX: 011-34-6-685-1437


Letter to Benidorm Squad Prior to the Tournament


E M I L  S I G N E S

To: Atlantis 1994 -- Benidorm Squad

This is the first of hopefully several notes that will provide you with some background information as well as some discussions of team and individual strategy.

1.  The squad is finalized!   Contact information is enclosed.  I think this is a great team, and I'm really looking forward to working with you on the practice field, seeing positive results in the tournament, and having fun on tour.

2. Whom to contact.  If you have an issue dealing with money, call Bill.  If you have a kit or logistical issue, contact Bob.  If you have a playing issue, contact me.  If you want to talk to one of your teammates, call them.

3. Background: Atlantis. For those with little or no knowledge of Atlantis, I've enclosed my "Atlantis advertisement" with this letter: it explains how it began and where it's gone.

4. Background: Benidorm.  Benidorm is a Spanish tourist town on the Mediterranean.  You will hear more English than Spanish spoken there, as it is a haven for working class British tourists (I have heard it described as "Yorkshire with sun").  As tourist towns go, it's not my favorite (one fish & chips shop after another), but there is the Mediterranean, lots of sun, sandy beaches, pubs, and a sevens tournament.

My father's home town (my A.K.A. is Emilio Jorge Francisco Xavier Signes Lagos) is 40 minutes away and one of my first cousins owns a bar/restaurant there.  If we can visit it will be fun: a town in Spain where not only is English not spoken, but the first language is Valencian, not Spanish.  (The 1988 Atlantis team made this trip and had a blast.)

5. Background: The Benidorm Sevens.  The tournament began in 1987 and during the first couple of years it was a pretty low key event.  In 1992, however, it acquired international status and drew many national teams preparing for the qualification rounds of the 1993 World Cup Sevens.  Fiji, Samoa, and the US, already qualified, also participated in the international bracket, which was won by Fiji 16-15 over Samoa.

This year, Fiji will again be participating in an international bracket that contains, according to the tournament organizer, 22 nationalities.  Atlantis will be in the international (as opposed to senior club) bracket.  So, look out Fiji!

6. Background: US teams at Benidorm.  In 1988, Atlantis lost in the quarterfinals 10-6 to the President's VII, a team comprised mainly of London Scottish players that eventually won the tournament (it could easily have been us).  For those who know them, the Atlantis team was Albrittain, Taranto, Schrichte and Erstich in the forwards, and Hayward, Petrakes, Montgomery, Bateman and Burnham in the backs.

In 1992, the Eagles participated in Benidorm, defeating the Ukraine and the Public School Wanderers before losing to Fiji in the semifinals.  1992 also saw a high powered women's bracket won by the Atlantis women's team, who didn't have a close game (Atlantis and Fiji were the tournament champions, a nice combination).  Six of the Atlantis women are representing the US at the 1994 Women's World Cup in Scotland.

7. Coaching Points: A Preliminary Discussion.  The following pages are the start of what will be a continuing discussion of sevens and how I hope we'll play.  I hope you'll read this stuff and get something out of it but don't worry: we'll have time to go over everything after we arrive.
Sevens: Some Preliminary Comments

(Note of 2013: a lot of very out-of-date stuff here, but I find it kind of interesting, in a period-piece kind of way.)

Sevens vs. Fifteens.  Perhaps the most significant thing that differentiates sevens from fifteens is that the difference in the number of players changes the probability of success of certain activities that occur in both games.

For example, in 15s, unless you are isolated, a tackle normally is accompanied by a ruck or maul, at which time offside lines are established that greatly increase the odds in favor of the offense.  In sevens, however, the most common situation is a simple open-field tackle, which brings with it no offside lines and allows defenders to remain behind the ball carrier and in the passing lanes.  Rucks are almost never formed, and mauls are often under less control than in 15s (if two defenders have closed in on the ball, for example, it's hard to drive that second defender off it).  For that reason, I advocate that, with specific exceptions, you should avoid being tackled in sevens.  "The game is best played and is most fun," says Australian coach Bob Dwyer, "when you have the ball and no one makes contact with you."

Of the exceptions, the main one is "big player takes on little player": we try to force two defenders to stop our big player, thus creating an overlap.  Specifically, on our team, that means McLean and Matizsik, and to some extent Gallagher. Beware, however, of carrying this situation too far: at some point the only players behind you will be those you have just beaten, and it may become virtually impossible to recycle the ball.

Another exception: anyone that can get far enough into a gap to be only subject to a "half tackle" and therefore stay on their feet with the ball available for recycling, will usually not be at risk and can often be helpful in creating an overlap.  And of course, we want our wings to take on their opponents and score tries, and sometimes they'll get caught: as long as it doesn't happen too often, that goes with the territory.

But remember: don't take a tackle in sevens unless you know why you're taking it!  With the exceptions noted above, we're probably better off using noncontact varieties of maneuvering to create space.

If, compared to 15s, taking a tackle in sevens is often a lower probability option, moving the ball backwards to buy time in the process of creating space can be, if done under control, a much higher probability option in sevens than in 15s, which places such a priority on constant forward motion.  To quote Bob Dwyer again, "Sevens isn't a game for putting opposition defenses under direct pressure; it's a game for outmaneuvering defenses."

Part of our pattern of play will be to have pocket (area behind the ball carrier) support at all times, and to get support players instantly behind the pocket player before the ball gets to the pocket.

Given our distribution of creators, power forwards and finishers, we want to force the defenders to cover the entire field and so when we're on offense, our players must themselves cover the width of the field. We want to maneuver our players so that we have creators (usually halfbacks and power props) in the midfield, and speed on the outside.  We create space, therefore, in the center, with our "jinky" players or our power players (or both), draw an extra defender to the breakdown, and then get the ball to speed.  In an ideal world, of course.

Defense.  There are lots of styles of playing defense in sevens.  For the most part they are based on either a 7-player or a 6-player defensive front.

The two most common patterns are a) 6 -player front plus a sweeper moving laterally with the ball well behind the front line, and b) 7-player front where the two end players alternate rotating into kick coverage depending on the location of the ball.

The traditional defense for years was the 6 + sweeper defense.  Ever since New Zealand re-popularized the 7-player front in the late 1980s, we have generally used this defense, although the Eagles, since last year's Sicily Sevens, have reverted to the 6+1 defense. 

In 1989 the Eagles (I was coaching at the time, and Charlie was on the team) added a wrinkle we called "Georgetown": it was designed for use at the set scrum and specifically intended to double-team the fly half before he could do anything creative (depending on various factors, the double-teamers were 2 and 5, 4 and 5, or 2 and 4).

This was a successful ploy and resulted in our beating Wales and holding a late 2nd-half 10-0 lead against Samoa, a game we [literally] threw away.  Samoa defeated Fiji in the next match.

I'm still undecided about what I'd like our approach to defense on this tour to be (I am eager to add a new wrinkle, though), and I'd like some feedback from the players during the next month.  (One hint: think basketball!)  I would like to come up with some sort of expansion of the Georgetown concept so that we could selectively double team any player we choose (the opponent's "danger man," perhaps, but also possibly an attacker not comfortable with decision making, etc.)  (E.g. if, from a scrum at our defensive right, the hooker can cover the fly half, then the fly half is free not just to double his opposite, but to cover the offensive center (similar to a drift defense in 15s, but not necessarily identical).  He could do this to help the center double the attacking center or to allow the center to push out to the inside of the wing.  We'd need, of course, ways to cover the forwards' side of the ball, and defend against the kick.  Furthermore, I think the recent success of the Eagles with their 6-player front is in the angles they're defending with, and I think we can incorporate that kind of defensive alignment without necessarily dedicating a player to a full-time sweeping role.

More pressure defenses! Suggestions welcome.  Even mandatory.

Tackling.  The island nations of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga have made an art out of the upper body tackle -- tackle player and ball, take them both to ground, push off and get up while the tackled player is still absorbing the shock of hitting the ground, take ball from tackled player, continue with game.  This works excellently, but only if the tackler has a strength and/or situational advantage on the ball carrier.  We don't want small players trying to go high on power players and run the risk of being blown over -- better just to get them to ground and force them to play the ball.  Furthermore, if we have more players in support of a break than the offense, or players that can get in the lane behind the ball carrier, putting the ball carrier on the floor will force the ball to be played and allow us to be in a good position to come away with it.

We should be aware of when which tackle is preferable, but missing a tackle in the name of going for a "better" type of tackle is never acceptable. A missed tackle is usually a try.

Transition game.  As in basketball, the transition from offense to defense and vice versa is often the key to a sevens match (it's important in 15s, too, although that tends to be a more forgiving variety of the game).  It seems almost magical, sometimes, watching Fiji immediately after they've forced a turnover: they seem to instantly get a player directly behind the ball carrier so that the sequence is: ball picked off, moved directly behind and across -- thus, in two passes and less than 2 seconds the ball is away from a crowd and Fiji is on the attack. 

There are many things attributable to Fiji's athleticism, but this is one example where tremendous game awareness is the main ingredient.  It's something we will try to develop.

Kicking game.  If there is one area in which American teams seem to be always at a disadvantage it is the kicking game.  We kick in sevens far less often than teams in most other countries and so have much less opportunity to play against teams that kick.  We need not only to be able to effectively cover opponents' kicks, but also to get a sense of when we need to kick, either to exploit the defense or to get ourselves out of trouble.

Perhaps the most advantageous time for an attacking kick is when we're going forward and the opponents are running at us, especially if they've got no sweeper or a sweeper that's ill-positioned.  By the time we make them turn around and run, we should have gotten by the primary defense and then it becomes a foot race.  Note that if both teams are stagnant and the defense is "soft," the defense can usually recover a kick past its line even without a sweeper.

When we have chased down an opponent's kick and find ourselves outnumbered, it means that we outnumber the opponents downfield, and a return kick can often be profitable.

Whenever we're in trouble, especially deep in our own territory, a clearing kick will often spare us the pain of a turnover and opposition try.  I have always advocated, in this situation, a kick that finds touch so that we can regroup defensively.  There are teams (the Harlequins of London, for one) that would rather kick the ball up the middle of the field and pressure the receivers.  The only way this works, however, is if all members of the kicking team come up in a line under control  (i.e. relatively slowly) and not individually at full speed.  I wouldn't advocate this unless we get a chance to practice and become comfortable with it in Spain.

More to follow.  The above are some general comments that crossed my mind as I began thinking about sevens for the first time this year.  I'll get more information to you as the next few weeks progress, and as I get feedback from you: eventually you may even have a coherent document in your hands.

Managerial items:

You'll hear more about these in the near future, but be aware of the following . . .


1. You will need a valid passport. If you are not an American citizen, you may also need a visa: check with the Spanish embassy . . .

2. Bill Gardner is graciously contributing the lion's share of the cost of kit, but there will be a small kit assessment levied on each of us.  More on this shortly.

Atlantis squad, Benidorm 1994, letter 1.  Page {PAGE|1}


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