The Dubai 7’s. 7 beers an hour or you’re not doing it right.

I reckon the international rugby unions looked at what their cricket mates did with the one dayer and thought. We only sell 80 minutes worth of beer. They sell 7 or 8 hours. Then they invented the rugby sevens tournament. 2 days (3 if you count the local competition) of beer drinking bliss.
Maybe bliss isn’t quite the right word. Certainly not at 8am on the morning of the second day. But like good cowboys you climb back up on the horse and complete your second 10-hour session. 7’s rugby is all about the number 7. 7 players per side 7 minutes per half. 7 songs. The same 7 played over and over. You would have thought they could have splashed out for more, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind. When your games are that short you need a lot of teams so they let lots of countries play. Even the crap ones. Some come for the experience, others for the food. I imagine the Zimbabwe team was thrilled to be in a country where bread doesn’t cost a million dollars a loaf. They played hard and fast. Fast, I suspect, so they could get off the field and back to the buffet table. The Poms weren’t too good on defense. But that’s what cost them their Empire so no surprises there. The Kenyans weren’t very good either. 7’s is a sprint not a marathon of a game and the Kenyans are better at marathons eh. Tunisia is not exactly world superstars at rugby but they gave the Canadian a run for their money. Rumor is that at halftime the Canadian coach, with the backing of the Canadian Government, offered the Tunisians Bryan Adams if they let the old Maple leaves have the win. Samoa did Ok considering anyone in that country that is really good at rugby has been ‘adopted’ by NZ. Same with Tonga and Fiji. Fiji still manages to do well at the 7’s and they faced the Kiwis and a few of their cousins in the final.
7’s isn’t just about rugby. It’s also about people dressing up in silly costumes that ideally are loosely linked to the country they are supporting, and getting pissed together. Looking around me it kind of felt like the Untied Nations had decided to have a Christmas party at a sports stadium. The Kiwi’s weren’t just the winners on the field. Over the 2 days a highly trained team of Pilipino boys and girls walked through the stands with little bags selling fresh, hot pies and sausage rolls. It was a tough job that just got tougher as the tournament wore on. Like those fearless medics you see in war movies who dodge bullets to get to the people that need their help the most, these little pie warriors dodged beer cans and demands to ‘sit down’ in 5 different languages, to make sure the drinkers kept up the internationally approved limit of one pie or sausage roll for every 10 beers consumed. It was only at the end of the event after a chat with a very happy man behind the pie shop counter that I found out the brains of the operation was a Kiwi. And he was right to be happy with over 20,000 pies sold in 3 days.
Another moneymaking scheme were the little pointy Asian hats being sold. The clean-cut man selling them said the money was going to help Cambodian children. I thought someone had done that by arresting Gary Glitter, but apparently that’s not enough. Or maybe he said the hats were so cheap because Cambodian children had made them. I can’t remember, I had had a lot of pies by then. I think they could have condensed all the international matches into one big day instead of dragging it out over two and adding lots of local games no one wanted to watch, but I guess they wouldn’t have sold as much beer then. Rugby was the winner, followed closely by Heineken but no Fitzy it wasn’t a game of two halves, there many. And each one gave you the chance to buy another beer or a pie or a pointy hat.