The 2008 Hannover Sevens was a rugby sevens
tournament held in Hannover, Germany. It was the
seventh edition of the European Sevens championship and also
functioned as a qualifying tournament for the 2009
Rugby World Cup Sevens.
Outcome
The tournament held in Hannover, Germany on 12 and 13
July 2008, as well as being the European Sevens championship,
functioned as a qualifying tournament for the world cup. England,
France and Scotland had already qualified through their past
performance. The five best nations out of the twelve participating
ones qualified for the Dubai tournament. Teams finished in the
following order:
Place
Country
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th
10th
11th
12th
Bid
On 16 June 2007, the FIRA congress in Monaco decided to
award the tournament to Hannover, beating bids from Russia, Greece
and Bosnia-Herzegovina
in the process.
Tournament history
From 2002, FIRA, the governing
body of European rugby, has been organising an annual European
championship Sevens tournament. A number of qualifying tournaments
lead up to a finals tournament, which functions as the European
championship and, in 2008, also as the qualifying stage for the
Sevens world cup. The first European
championship was held in 2002 in Heidelberg, Germany, and was won
by Portugal, the team that won every championship since except 2007,
when Russia won. The next year, the tournament
was again held in Heidelberg and in 2004, Palma de
Mallorca, Spain was the
host. From 2005 to 2007, Moscow was the host
of the tournament. Hannover held the tournament
for the first time in 2008 and will do so again in 2009.
Tournament
Stadium
The tournament was held at the AWD-Arena in
Hannover, home ground of the football club Hannover 96. The
stadium holds 50.000 spectators, 43,000 of them on seats, the rest
standing. The tournament was seen by over
30,000 spectators, a good turn out in a country like Germany, were
rugby isn't a mainstream sport. After selling more than 35,000
tickets in advance, mostly within Germany, the organisers were
forced to open up the upper tier of the stadium to meet demand.
Qualifying
Twelve teams qualified through the seven
qualifying tournaments, held at the following locations:
The tournament was divided into a group and a
finals stage. In the group stage, two groups of six teams were
drawn. Within each group, each team played each other once. The top
two teams went to the Cup stage of the tournament while the third
and fourth placed team qualified for the Plate stage. Five and six
went to the Bowl finals.
Three separate rounds of finals were held, Bowl, the
lowest, Plate and Cup. the semi final winners of each group went on
to the final while the losers played each other. All teams from the
Cup stage were qualified for the next sevens world cup and also the
Plate winner.
Bowl
Winner: Russia
Plate
Winner: Italy (qualified for the 2009 Sevens
world cup)
Cup
Winner: Portugal (all four teams qualified for
the 2009 Sevens world cup)
