Kenya vs South Africa: Women’s Rugby Sevens Semi-Final Showdown

Kenya vs South Africa: Women’s Rugby Sevens Semi-Final Showdown

Kenya and South Africa, the two top women’s seven-a-side rugby teams are set to renew their rivalry when they face off in the semi-finals of the first leg of the World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series at Athlone Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa on March 2, 2025. The two teams topped their pools on the…

thesportsnewsarena

March 2, 2025

3–4 minutes

The two teams topped their pools on the opening day of the two-day tournament played under a new format with the 12 teams placed in four pools of three teams each. Under this new format, the winners of the pool matches proceed to the cup-semi final bypassing the quarter finals.

Kenya Lionesses began their campaign with a 20-5 win over Samoa. In this match, Grace Okulu, the team captain scored three tries while Naomi Amuguni added one. The Lionesses roared against Poland winning 29-7. Freshia Oduor scored two tries while Judith Okumu, Stella Wafula and Sinaida Nyachio added one each. Oduor and Nyachio kicked over one conversion.

Unbeaten South Africa

Hosts South Africa did not concede a try on the first day. The semi-final tie is a similar scenario when the two teams met in November last year in the final of the Africa Sevens tournament in Accra, Ghana where South Africa won 19-10.

In 2023, South Africa denied Kenya a place at the 2024 Olympics hosted by France in Paris when they edged out the Lionesses 12-7 in Tunisia. Will it be a third time lucky? The other women’s semi-final is between Argentina and Colombia.

The men’s semi-finals will be between Germany and Cagada while Chile play Samoa.

While Kenya and South Africa were successful, the three other African teams, Uganda (two teams) and Madagascar dropped to the lower tier competition. .

Play-off

Both Uganda teams and Madagascar shall play in the fifth-place semi-final. The men’s team started their campaign by beating Brazil 24-14 but lost 17-32 to Samoa. They have a tough match against Portugal in the play-off. The women’s team lost 7-24 to Colombia but bounced back to convincingly beat Belgium 29-5. In the play-off, Uganda shall play Thailand.

Madagascar, Africa’s other representatives who edged out Hong Kong China 21-19 in their opening match before falling 0-38 to Canada have Japan on their sights in the fifth place semi-final.

New format

The second tournament shall be held at the same venue under the new format next week where the teams shall be ranked according to their performance this weekend. At the end of the two tournaments, the top eight teams shall proceed to Poland for the penultimate round in April where the top four teams in each category have a chance to travel to Los Angeles and battle it out with the bottom four teams in the World Rugby Sevens World Series. In this tournament the top four shall be promoted to core status next season.

Order of play, Sunday, March 2, 2025

Men

Ninth place semi-final: Tonga v Brazil; Georgia v Hong Kong China

Fifth Place semi-final: Uganda v Portugal; Japan v Madagascar

Cup semi-finals: Chile v Samoa; Germany v Canada;

Women

Ninth place semi-final: Mexico v Belgium; Hong Kong China v Samoa

Fifth Place semi-final: Thailand v Uganda; Czechia v Poland

Cup semi-finals: Argentina v Colombia; South Africa v Kenya

Results, Saturday, March 1, 2025

Men

Pool A: Germany, Japan, Georgia.