Wales won the Gold Coast Plate final

Wales will be looking to build on their success from last weekend’s efforts in Australia when they kick off proceedings in the Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens tomorrow.

Paul John’s men made the quarter finals of the Cup competition before being knocked out by eventual champions Fiji in the opening event of the HSBC Sevens World Series on the Gold Coast Sevens.

Wales bounced back to claim the Plate final, to secure 13 valuable points to find themselves in fifth place on the current series standings. The Wales squad know they are in for a tough time this weekend, as head coach Paul John explains.

“Dubai has all been about trying to get the boys fully recovered and ready for Friday’s group games,” he explained. “We’ve had a different preparation because we are playing our first game at 9.20am (local time) therefore we have to get up really early to get a substantial breakfast so the boys can refuel. Our first games last week were 1pm!

“We play Scotland first and they were really tough last week. We had to work really hard before beating them. Then we’ve got Canada second. They won the Pan Am Games last month so that will be tough as well as they are a very good team.

“Our final game will be against Australia who reached the semi finals of the main draw last week so once again we find ourselves in an extremely competitive group. The boys trained really well this morning and are now looking forward to starting the competition.”

Wales Sevens Squad

Tom Habberfield
Harry Robinson
Mathew Patchel
Alex Walker
Tom Prydie
Owen B Williams
Ifan Evans
Rhys Shellard
Will Price
Richie Pugh
Richard Smith
Owen P Williams