We’d like to thank all of our fantastic readers and commenters that helped make our coverage of the 2008 IRB Sevens Rugby Tournament so much fun to bring. It was our first true “live blog” and we had tons of fun with it. In case you missed the action over the weekend, here’s a quick recap of the weekend’s events.

Cup Winner: New Zealand
Plate Winner: Fiji
Bowl Winner: Wales
Shield Winner: Australia

Fortunately for the home crowd, the United States had a good showing. They fought hard against Plate finalists England and later upset France in their first game yesterday. A narrow loss to Wales is the only thing preventing them from earning hardware. The same can’t be said for Mexico, who took five consecutive beatings over the weekend, getting outscored 249-0. As Mexico left the field, they received a standing ovation for their efforts.

But the major story here was the dominance of New Zealand, who allowed just 27 points in six matches. After their quarterfinal destruction of Fiji, the writing was on the wall for an All Black title, which is what we got yesterday. It’s the 2nd USA Sevens title for New Zealand and if this weekend was any indication, it won’t be their last. To review all of the weekend craziness, just look below and replay our live blogs of Saturday and Sunday.

Also, we’ve launched a Flickr page that features all of the pictures we took from the field. You can check out those pictures here. Some of our favorite pictures are after the jump.

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Welcome to day two of our live blog from Petco Park. We’re here at the IRB USA Sevens Rugby Tournament for the entire day. We’ll be providing live updates, photos from the field and reader polls. If you have any questions or comments, type them into the box below. There’s no need to refresh the page, just sit back and enjoy.

Update: That concludes the USA Sevens Rugby Tournament. We’ll have a wrapup sometime late tonight. Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out photos from the event on our Flickr stream here.

We’d like to thank everyone who joined us in today’s live blog from PETCO Park. We’ll be back at it at 10 a.m. local time tomorrow. With 24 matches taking place on day one of the tournament, I thought it would be fitting to discuss the day’s “Winners and Losers,” teams that surprised me and others that failed to live up to expectations.

Winners
Samoa: Last year’s runner-up proved that their 2007 finish was no fluke, winning all three Group D matches, including a 21-17 victory over Fiji in the day’s final match. Last year’s loss in the finals to that same Fiji team obviously left a bitter taste in the Samoan’s mouths, as they came out and posted some of the day’s most impressive performances. They kicked things off with a 33-5 route of West Indies, then beat the Australians 15-7. Samoa will open up play tomorrow against Scotland, with kickoff scheduled for 12:34 local time.

England: Another traditional Sevens power, the Brits also prevailed in all three of their matches today. They opened things up with a 48-0 romp over Mexico, before beating the United States 28-21 in one of the day’s most exciting matches. To close things out, they squeaked by South Africa, another powerhouse and the reigning World Cup champions in 15s. England will face Kenya in their opening match. Kenya’s speed against England’s size should make for a very close encounter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our live blog from Petco Park. We’re here at the IRB USA Sevens Rugby Tournament and we’ll be covering it for the most of the day. If you have any questions or comments, type them into the box below. There’s no need to refresh the page, just sit back and enjoy.

Update: We’re done for today, but we’ll be back tomorrow at 10AM PST to liveblog Day 2 of the IRB USA Sevens. In the meantime, check out our flickr album here to see some of the pictures we took from Day 1.

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Host: Sonny

In this episode of Sportable Video, Sonny talks to Luke Yoder, Field Manager at Petco Park to find out what goes on when preparing for an event like the IRB Sevens. Luke explains how they transform Petco Park’s existing turf into a rugby-playable field.

Also, we’d like to remind you guys that we’ll be blogging the IRB Sevens all weekend at Petco Park. Join us tomorrow afternoon as we live-blog the event!

If you’re one of our veteran readers, you might remember our live blogs of the USA Sevens, an awesome rugby tournament that features 44 games in two days. Well, we’ve been lucky enough to get passes for this year’s tournament, which will take place this weekend at San Diego’s Petco Park.

But there’s more! Yesterday, we were fortunate enough to visit Petco Park as the transition is made from a baseball diamond to a rugby pitch. We also interviewed Luke Yoder, the Director of Landscape and Field Maintenance for the Padres, who has been working diligently to prepare the field for this weekend’s festivities. The footage kicks off a new feature for the site, Sportable Video. We’ll have the video and interview up on the site in the next day or two.

We’d like to thank Luke for helping us out, as well as the folks over at USA Sevens. Also, a big thanks to Ben Coughlan over at Media Relations with the Padres for letting us get the chance to interview Luke.

Update: Join us here for our live blog!