Background
Prior to 1993, Rugby Sevens had already built up a substantial international presence. The relative ease with which the rules could be learnt and applied, combined with the ability to quickly organise teams due to fewer players, as well as providing a fast paced game for spectators enticed many nations to set up domestic tournaments, and appealed to a large international audience outside of the established power houses of the traditional 15-a-side game. Such was the international popularity of the game that the Scottish Rugby Union were able to organise a well attended International Tournament in 1973 to celebrate the centenary of the Scottish Rugby Union. England came away victorious from that first international event.
Soon after, in early 1975 the Chairman of the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union, A.D.C. "Tokkie" Smith, was talking with tobacco company executive Ian Gow. Gow had been a spectator at the 1973 event and had proposed to Smith to sponsor a Rugby tournament with top teams from throughout the world competing. This gave rise to the inaugural Hong Kong Sevens on March 28, 1976. This tournament grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s in both supporter popularity and the number of participating teams. Sevens was proving to be the bridge between the established international rugby elite and those nations with less resources and less developed professional infrastructures.
In the early 1990s, The Scottish Rugby Union made a proposal to the International Rugby Football Board for the creation of a Rugby Sevens World Cup. The World Cup for the 15-a-side game had been staged successfully in 1987 and 1991 and had proved the worth of such an event. The IRB, which had a duty to involve and help to develop the rugby of the new member unions, recognised the value of Sevens to further this end, and their chairman, Vernon Pugh, enthusiastically agreed. Thus, the IRB organised the first officially sanctioned Rugby World Cup Sevens to be held at Murrayfield in April 1993. The ultimate prize of the competition was to be called the Melrose Cup, named after the small Scottish town of Melrose where the Sevens format had been born in 1883. A butchers apprentice and Melrose 20-a-side quarterback, Ned Haig, suggested having a rugby tournament as part of a sports day to raise funds at the end of the rugby season and his boss David Sanderson proposed playing in a tournament that required reduced numbers of players in each team. On 28 April 1883, the Melrose seven-a-side tournament began, with the time of each match limited to 15 minutes. The first World Cup was held 12 days shy of the 110th anniversary of that first tournament.
Read more about this topic: 1993 Rugby World Cup Sevens
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)