January 1996:
Atlantis at Punta del Este Sevens
(Atlantis tournament #45)
Emil Signes
February 1996
JUNE 17, 2013 rev. December 21, 2014
Note of 2013: I found a Rugby
Magazine article on this tour, published in
the March 1996 issue. But I could not find any
corresponding digital file in my records. Rather than retype the entire
thing, I have condensed the
article (which appears in its entirety in the link above) to include
mostly Atlantis results as well as the tour ambience.
Atlantis at Punta del Este Sevens, January 1996
Top, L to R: Bob Davis, Willie Clarke, Will Brewington,
Keith McLean, Kevin O'Connell, Emil Signes
Bottom, L to R: Jason Fox, Steve Hiatt, Bill Russell,
Mike Mullen, Thaddeus Hill
Punta del Este, Uruguay, January 6-7, 1996. In an
exciting back-and-forth final,
20-year old Christian Cullen of New Zealand, the
tournament MVP, scored a 60-meter
try with a great individual move to defeat a valiant French team 31-26 that had tied the game
on the last play of regulation.
Punta
del Este Sevens
Punta
del Este, along with Dubai, Tokyo and Taiwan, shares
the reputation of being one of the top sevens
tournaments in the world outside of Hong Kong.
Punta features, among others, national teams from
New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Wales and
Canada; invitational club sides such
as the Australian Barbarians and Fiji Cavaliers, Argentinean provincial sides Buenos Aires and Rosario;
FIRA, a collection of top European players
(excluding the five nations); and the Legends, a team of internationals from around the
world, coached by Bob Dwyer.
The 1996 tournament was played in the
Campus de Maldonado, a brand-new
state of the art, 25,000 capacity
facility. About 10,000 fans attended this
event, and this attendance should grow along
with the level of the tournament.
Next year, Punta will host one of the three 7s
World Cup qualifying tournaments, from which five of the 24
participants will emerge.
Tournament
Format
The format
of the Punta del Este Sevens is identical to the
format Hong Kong used between 1982
and 1995: eight
brackets of three teams each,
with the top team going to
the Gold bracket, the second
to the Silver, and the third
to the Bronze.
Gold
Bracket. The
quarterfinal winners were
France, Fiji, New Zealand
and Argentina; France
squeezed by Fiji 17-14 and
New Zealand thrashed
Argentina.
Silver
Bracket. Buenos
Aires, whose
only
loss was to the
All-Blacks, cruised
to the silver
bracket.
Atlantis
Atlantis
lost its two pool
games and
ended up in
the Bronze
where it defeated
Chile before
bowing to the
British Old
Boys.
Fiesta 20, Atlantis 14.
Atlantis' first game was against Fiesta, an
Argentinean invitational side with three former Pumas among its nine sevens
specialists. Both teams scored
two converted tries (both Thad Hill tries were
converted by Bill Russell), but Fiesta's two penalty
kicks were the difference (14-20). At
Tietjens commented to us in the locker room
afterwards, "It's very
difficult to lose to a side when you know
you're better."
France 31, Atlantis 0.
It's difficult to call a 31-0 loss a
success, yet Atlantis strung
together stretches against France that we felt
would get us ready to compete in the
Bronze. In addition, our back-up "stars
and stripes" jerseys were crowd (and trading) favorites, and Thad Hill, who did
everything but score in
the game, captured the imagination of
the crowd.
Atlantis 33, Chile 7. Just
about everything went right for us in our 33-7
defeat of Chile, a surprisingly
good sevens team, and tries were scored by Hill
(2), Willie Clarke,
Kevin O'Connell, and Will Brewington.
Brewington became the first player to gain
"tenure" for Atlantis having competed for us
both in 1986 and 1996.
Old Boys 24, Atlantis 5. The
semifinal started out well for Atlantis, as
Steve Hiatt scored an 80-meter try on a penalty play.
Despite confidence in our
set piece play, two
lineout blunders and a misplay from a
kickoff cost us three tries and the Old
Boys ended up with a convincing 24-5
win. A 90-m run
by Thad Hill, although it didn't end
up in a try, had the crowd screaming and marked the second
consecutive year that Thad has
been a crowd favorite at Punta.
After
all was said and done, the
general consensus among the team
was that despite some brilliant moments, on the field we had underachieved.
Gordon Tietjens
and Willie Clarke
During the Dubai Sevens, I had a long talk with
All Black Sevens coach Gordon Tietjens, and this led to the
inclusion of the Bay of Plenty's Willie Clarke on Atlantis'
side.
Furthermore, "Titch" ran practice sessions for us, scrimmaged
the All Black against us, and gave us lots of helpful
advice. Although it didn't pay off
directly at Punta, many of his ideas and drills will be
propagated within the U.S. and I'm convinced that this will lead
to an improvement in our sevens play.
The scrimmage against New Zealand raised our
expectations, although Mike Mullen suffered a cut lip in a
collision with Joe Tauiwi that was to limit his playing time to
one game.
Law Snafu
The tournament was excellently run,
with one notable exception. We didn't
realize until after we had actually started playing that the
IRB variations on sevens were not being utilized (conversions
were place kicks, etc.). People were running around just a few
minutes before kickoff, wondering whether
there really were "official" IRB variations on sevens, and
someone decided there weren't.
Of course there are, they weren't played, and
this was a huge blunder.
Carnival-Like
Parade
As do many other
international sevens tournaments, the Punta del Este Sevens has a parade of participants. This one took
place in a carnival-like atmosphere, featuring clowns on stilts and provided amusement for all.
Ed Sorensen
American Ed Sorensen was one of the tournament
refs, and was rewarded for his excellent work by being
given the Fiji-France semifinal, a 17-14 squeaker to France.
Culture: Mate
No Atlantis tour would be complete without a bit
of culture, and this year Jason Fox, Thad
Hill and I got into the mate (MAH-tay) scene. A
tea-like-drink popular in Uruguay,
Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, mate
has its own implements and procedures, and we were
intrigued by it.
Snow in the
Northeast
Returning to the
US via Jorge Newberry airport in Argentina, we were
confronted with the news that the "blizzard of the
century" had arrived in the Northeastern US and that our New York
destination was closed - and unlikely to open in
the immediate future. We were packed off to
a hotel smack in the middle of Buenos Aires, where
we stayed for another three days.
While many of our loved ones were
frolicking in the Northeast's
winter wonderland, we had to endure
the heat of the Southern sun, the 22 lanes of
traffic on the Avenida 9 de Julio in front of our
hotel, and the crowded streets of the Argentinean capital.
But no one ever said that
the sevens life was easy.
Beef,
Maradona and the Tango
At the party following the Punta
tournament, soccer legend Diego Maradona made a 5 AM appearance.
During our first evening in
Buenos Aires, Bill Russell, Thad Hill and I met Chris Swinski, a former Swiss ambassador to
Argentina, making
his first visit to the capital since moving to Hong Kong
as Consul General four years ago. Chris took us to
Bar Sur in San Telmo, the "old" Buenos Aires, where we
were treated to a late night celebration of tango singing
and dancing - truly one of the "special"
moments of my touring life. I later
discovered that access to the tango is not too
difficult: there is a 24-hour "Tango Channel" on Argentinean TV.
[Note of 2013: this was
in the very early days of specialist cable & satellite channels, so a channel dedicated to the
tango was scarcely
to be believed.]
The next day, counseling us on
our food selection, our hotel's
restaurant manager said "You
must eat steak! After all, the three
most important symbols of Argentina are
beef, Maradona and the
tango."
We ate the steak and had
experienced them all.
[Note of
2014: here's a 2013 link on
Youtube to Bar Sur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cyL-2xrfeo.
And here,
from a much earlier time, is a
tango at the Bar Sure, supposedly
the first ever filmed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhgGYsTb0sY. There are
more.]
Atlantis Relaxing in Punta del Este
L to R: Kevin O'Connell, Mike Mullen, Bob Davis, Thadd
Hill, Jason Fox, Emil Signes, Will Brewington
Atlantis squad & scoring:
Atl. #
|
Name
|
Club
|
Territory
|
G
|
T
|
C
|
PK
|
Pts
|
36
|
Will Brewington
|
MD Exiles
|
MARFU
|
4
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
275
|
Willie Clarke
|
Bay of Plenty (NZ)
|
---
|
3
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
236
|
Jason Fox
|
Cleveland Rovers
|
Midwest
|
3
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
276
|
Steve Hiatt
|
Old Blues (CA)
|
Pacific
|
4
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
229
|
Thaddeus Hill
|
Fort Worth
|
West
|
4
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
20
|
123
|
Keith McLean
|
Phila/Whitemarsh
|
MARFU
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
273
|
Mike Mullen
|
Worcester
|
NRU
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
274
|
Kevin O'Connell
|
Hartford
|
NRU
|
3
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
102
|
Bill Russell (capt)
|
Old Blue (NY)
|
NRU
|
4
|
0
|
6
|
0
|
12
|
|
|
|
TOTAL
|
4
|
8
|
6
|
0
|
52
|
|
|
|
Opponents
|
4
|
12
|
8
|
2
|
82
|
Atlantis and Welsh Management
in the midst of a trading frenzy after the tournament
Emil Signes, Bob Davis, Wales Manager John Ryan and Wales coach Glyn Davies.
Sticking his head into
the picture is Keith McLean
[Cultural note of 2014: the word
"photobomb" was not in documented use until 2008]
