The Wellington Sevens or the New Zealand International Sevens is an annual rugby sevens tournament held in Wellington, New Zealand. The tournament, the third on the IRB Sevens World Series circuit, is played at Wellington's Westpac Stadium in early February and includes teams from 16 countries. The hosting contract between the International Rugby Board and the New Zealand Rugby Union runs until 2011.
The event attracts over thirty thousand spectators annually. The tournament has become Wellington's largest sporting event and one of New Zealand's leading sporting events.
It also has a reputation for a party atmosphere, with a large proportion of attendees choosing to wear fancy dress. Recent years have seen large groups of costumes that vary from Fred Flintstone and Wilma to Care Bears, dance troops, wrestlers and many other interesting costumes. More recently items of recent media interest or advertisements form a key theme. Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, George Bush have made appearances. Movie figures such as Men in Black (MIB) and Austin Powers are crowd favorites and an impersonator of Austin has been a regular feature each year performing to the crowd.
In 2009 Air New Zealand, one of the major sponsors for the Wellington sevens, introduced a 'Beads for Kisses' ambient media campaign as a yearly sevens ritual. Over 100,000 strings of Mardi gras style beads were given to the crowd, who could then exchange the beads for kisses from other participants. This was followed in 2010 with the addition of kissing booths.
The 2009 Wellington Sevens was famous for television graphics being incorrect. When a player scored a try, the graphics showed the phrase such as "1st Tryin Wellington" rather than "1st Try In Wellington".
[edit] Past Champions
[edit] Winners
[edit] Notes and references
[edit] External links
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| 2011–12 Events |
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| Current stadiums |
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| Former events |
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| Seasons |
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Wellington Sevens
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| Seasons |
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New Zealand
Fiji
Australia
South Africa
Samoa
England
Argentina
