France win world university title
After losing in the final in 2012 and 2014 France finally won their first World University title in Swansea on Saturday, comfortably beating the 2014 champions Canada in the final after a dominant performance throughout the three days.
Published by John Birch, July 9th, 2016
4 minute read
Played every two years, the 7thWorld University Championship broke new ground with the largest ever women’s entry – bigger this year than the men’s tournament – and the inclusion of teams from New Zealand and Australia for the first time.
As we said inour preview, many of the teams with past experience of the tournament included players with full international experience, making this a potentially the highest quality university tournament that there has yet been.
The opening day was a good one for both the holders, Canada, and the hosts, Great Britain who finished unbeaten as did France and China. The two teams from the southern hemisphere, on the other hand, were struggling. Without access to players from national squads – unlike most of their opponents – they were facing tougher competition than they had perhaps expected.
Day two saw a change in fortune for some of the opening day’s leading teams. Great Britain lost a crucial game to Japan 21-0, which required them to beat France in the final pool game. However, the French were getting better and better and dominated the fixture to win 31-5. The hosts therefore missed out on the semi-finals.
In Pool B, Portugal lived up to their nation’s sevens reputation with a surprise 21-0 win over China, who had impressed on Day one. This required China to beat champions Canada in their final game – and they came incredibly close, repeatedly taking the lead only for Canada to come back. China still lead up to the final play, but the Canadians broke through to win the game and put China out.
A suspicion that Pool A had turned out to be rather stronger than B was confirmed in both the plate and cup semi-finals. Pool A teams won both of the former, and in the latter France dismissed Portugal with ease, before Japan very nearly completed a clean sweep, narrowly falling 7-5 to the Canadians.
In the final, after a tight opening phases where, after pulling back an early French score Canada came close to going ahead, the game quickly became one-way traffic with Canada finding it almost impossible to get out of their own half. The Canadians defence was impressive but two more French tries before the break gave them a comfortable lead. That pattern continued into the second period with another brace of French tries sealing their win.
Results
Pool A:Great Britain 12-0 Italy; France 26-0 New Zealand; Japan 19-5 Italy; Great Britain 27-7 New Zealand; France 19-12 Japan; Italy 14-7 New Zealand; Great Britain 0-21 Japan; France 36-0 Italy; Japan 29-12 New Zealand; Great Britain 5-31 France
Pool B:Canada 14-12 Portugal; China 15-7 Spain; Australia 12-12 Portugal; Canada 17-5 Spain; China 10-0 Australia; Portugal 12-5 Spain; Canada 36-0 Australia; China 0-21 Portugal; Australia 12-14 Spain; China 17-19 Canada
Plate SF:Great Britain 33-0 Spain; China 5-19 Italy
Cup SF:France 26-0 Portugal; Japan 5-7 Canada
9th/10th:New Zealand 21-5 Australia
7th/8th:Spain 7-10 China
5th/6th:Great Britain 15-10 Italy
3rd/4th:Portugal 12-24 Japan
Final:France 31-5 Canada