SF to be the center of the rugby world this summer

San Francisco hosts the 2018 Rugby World Cup Sevens tournament at AT&T Park in three months and the seedings for the July 20-22 tournament were released Wednesday as organizers marked the 100-day countdown to the start of the festivities.

And you can bet that the tournament experience will be festive. Brace yourself, Bay Area, because you’re about to experience a party rivaled only by soccer’s World Cup.

For those of you old enough to remember when Palo Alto was a host site for the 1994 World Cup, that was quite the scene. That will have nothing on what rugby fans bring to the party, who are all out for a good time. Rugby fans travel exceptionally well and, with the chance to visit a world-class city like San Francisco (warts and all) and all the other things that make the Bay Area one of the best places in the world to live (again, warts and all), they will take advantage of it all.

And the party isn’t just before and after the game. It continues inside the stadium as fans are known to parade around singing, dancing and supporting their team, all in the name of good fun.

The best part of sevens rugby? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the game. It’s all about speed, open field moves and quick matches. A full game lasts about 20 minutes before the next two teams trot out for their match. That’s three matches in an hour. Usually it’s the other way around: three hours to watch one football, basketball or baseball game.

Watch a couple matches and the game is easy to figure out: the ultimate goal is to score a “try,” what you may be more familiar with as a “touchdown.” The other big rule is the ball can only be passed backward. All the other technical stuff — scrums, lineouts, etc. — can be figured out on the fly.

You almost won’t even care about the intricacies of the game because you will be in awe of the size, power and speed these athletes possess. Players who would be on the offensive line or linebackers in football are defense-punishing ball carriers in rugby. It’s not uncommon to see a player listed at 6-5, 220 pounds have uncanny agility and quickness. Then there are the true speed burners, who would give any world-class sprinter a run for his money.

The seedings for the 24-team event are based on the 2016-17 and the first half of the 2018 World Rugby Seven Series, as well as a World Series qualifying tournament. The host USA Eagles were given the No. 5 seed, behind four of the sport’s traditional powers: South African (No. 1), Fiji (No. 2), New Zealand (No. 3) and England (No. 4). The United States is seeded ahead of such rugby stalwarts as Scotland (No. 7), Samoa (No. 13) and Tonga (No. 24).

To be fair, a lot of those nations known to have strong 15-man rugby programs were slow to the sevens game. The United States, on the other hand, has really focused on building the sevens program, winning the Las Vegas tournament title last month. The national 11-man team, however, continues to slowly gain ground on the rest of the world.

A 16-team women’s tournament will also be going on at the same time, with New Zealand being the top-ranked team. The U.S. women, like the men, are the No. 5 seed.

There is even a local angle to the tournament. Folau Niua (Palo Alto, Woodside High School) and Danny Barrett (Pacifica, Sacred Heart Cathedral) are well entrenched starters for the men’s team, while Sequoia alum Bulou Mataitoga is in the women’s team’s players pool.

So if you see a line of baby-blue clad, blue-wig wearing, whistle-blowing, dancing conga line snaking around the streets of San Francisco in July, don’t worry, it’s most likely a group of Fiji supporters. If you keep hearing the term “All Blacks” being bandied about, don’t get offended. It’s just the name given to the New Zealand squad. Fans of Wallabies and Springboks, dressed in shades of greens and yellows, will be on hand to support Australia and South Africa. And of course there will be plenty of stars and stripes.

Whether you’re a die-hard USA Eagles fan or want to root for the homeland of your ancestors, it’s all fair game. Because when it comes to rugby, in my limited experience, it doesn’t really matter who you root for, as long as you’re having a good time.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117. You can follow him on Twitter @CheckkThissOutt.