See the World Through Rugby Sevens

Emil Signes was kind enough to write an article for the 2012 Surfside Sevens Program.

When I first played 7s, in 1969, I thought it was an odd game, especially for slow people like me. When I first coached it, in 1977, it was a great way to spend a summer day out, and when my team won its first-ever major tournament (the 1978 Ontario Sevens), I knew a good sevens day could produce quite a rush.

In 1986, I was appointed coach to the US National Men’s Sevens Team. The first international sevens trip I took — Hong Kong and Australia ­— was the longest and most exotic trip of my rugby life to date, but ­— as I was to find out later — I hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.

I went on to coach and/or manage the US men for seven years and 14 years later I returned as video analyst for three (2007-09); between those years with the men I coached the US women’s national sevens team, from 1996 to 2005. During that time I added several countries to the list of places I got to go with national team — England, Scotland, Italy, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, Dubai.

There were some pretty amazing experiences mixed in among those trips. On the field, with the US men, a Plate victory in Hong Kong, defeats of Argentina and Wales (the first time we had beaten those countries in any form of rugby); for the women, earning a spot in 1999 — together with New Zealand — to play in the first international women’s game to take place in the Hong Kong stadium in the same tournament as the men.

And off the field were some once-in-a-lifetime experiences as well. My first morning in Hong Kong in 1987 I went for a run in the city at dawn and ended up at a park where a vast number of senior citizens were engaged in Tai Chi and I watched in wonder. The following week we were in Sydney and we had a “barbie” sponsored by our host club; it was the first time I’d seen the southern sky and remembered having fun trying to pick out the constellations I’d seen in books as a kid.

In New Zealand the women spent an evening at the Waitangi Marae and a day at Robertson Island, two experiences that somewhat lessened the sting of losing to the New Zealand Maori team. In South Africa the men went for a ride through a game preserve; in Scotland there was a reception in Edinburgh Castle; in Fiji we drank kava with the residents of Rukurukulevu and had a touch game on Mana Island in a reenactment of “Field of Dreams”; in Sicily we wandered into Mount Etna, which two years later would be erupting on a tour I took with Germany. Experiences too many to recount in one article.

But that was pretty rarified air to be in ­­— international rugby represents quite a select group of people.

I soon found out that just about every country that plays rugby has some kind of a sevens tournament; the quality of these tournaments varies from international level to even more casual than a casual club sevens in the US. More often than not, teams that participate have to pay their entire costs plus an entry fee, but it’s been an amazing way to see the world and tour with people that, whether top level players or not, know how to a) take the game seriously, b) be great ambassadors for their country and its rugby culture, and c) have a lot of fun as well. All three of these are requirements for teams I take on tour.

The first of the non-national teams I went with on tour were the Cougars in Melrose 1986-88. Melrose is the site of the first-ever sevens tournament (1883), and it was great to be there as a participant. And — at the post-tourney party — well, the Scots really know how to have fun!

I founded Atlantis in 1986 as a way to get players from different clubs the opportunity to experience all the joys of sevens and realize that it was possible to do this on a one-off basis. Originally I thought small; just domestic tournaments, but we’d only been in existence a few months, before we were invited to two sevens tournaments in the London area, and later to several Scottish tourneys.

But the moment that got me to realize what the universality of sevens could do was the Benidorm Sevens of 1988. Somewhere — this was well before the Cloud so it almost seems impossible that it could have happened — I saw an advertisement for this tournament, and I knew that Benidorm was only about 20 miles from my father’s hometown in Spain. When I had been there as a youngster in the mid-60’s the country was still recovering from the Civil War 30 years earlier. It was a link to another time, almost none of the following could be found: cars, TV’s, telephones, flush toilets, etc. Things were different in 1988, but I still found it hard to believe that rugby could exist there.

The team I selected was very good; the tournament was great (we lost to the eventual champions in the QF), and I was able to not only visit my father’s home town (Gata de Gorgos) but take the team there, and my cousin — the proprietor of a bar/restaurant in town — made us all paella complemented with killer sangria.

The boys got to wander around two completely distinct parts of an evolving Spain: 1) seedy Benidorm, at the time a new tourist resort for the north of England working class; and 2) a remnant of the past: Gata de Gorgos, not yet removed from its ancient peasant agricultural roots.

The Benidorm Sevens, and trips to my father’s hometown, would become staples of future Atlantis trips as well, including thrilling Go Kart challenges in Benidorm and a stop at a local Gata game of “pilota valenciana,” a handball game related to an extinct predecessor of the Basque jai-alai. And always a visit to cousin Antonio’s Bar Pou for paella and sangria.
The Atlantis men finally won the tournament in 1995 and the Atlantis women won in their only appearance there, in 1992.

Oh well, I thought, this is fabulous, but rugby will never take me to my mother’s hometown (Havana). But it did. Atlantis were the pioneers, the spark behind the first ever Havana Sevens in 2000. It’s a long story, but we did it. After a hiatus of several years the tourney was reestablished in 2010 with the help of Canadian Karl Fix.

What is there to say about going to Cuba? For me, always emotional, since I still have many relatives there. For the team, an opportunity to see a “forbidden” place (Americans are still not allowed to travel there without special permission. We had that special permission, a license from the Treasury Department, and that trip is an eye-opener for everyone that goes for the first time.)

In 1995 in Benidorm I met a team from Bulgaria (I didn’t know they played rugby there either! — they’re currently ranked 78th in the world, ahead of Cameroon but behind Pakistan) and Atlantis were invited to — and attended — a tournament in Sofia. A colleague from work gave me an old World War II manual designed for US troops with translations of popular phrases in Bulgarian. I passed out copies to the team, and they never failed to get a smile from a local when they showed them the phrase “The US government will pay your expenses.” We won the tournament that year and met players from the Yugoslavian team, who were in the middle of a brutal civil war. One of them, Sasha Leskovar, came to the US for a couple of months and played for Atlantis.

Bulgaria is the only place I know where nodding your head means no and rotating it from left to right means yes, which caused Bill Russell great confusion at the breakfast table when repeated nodding caused the waitress to think he didn’t want anything. We won the tournament, but it was the environment that made the tour!

In January 1996 we visited Uruguay for the Punta del Este 7s; on the way back our flight to NY was cancelled due to 30” of snow on the ground at home; at the time we had just landed in Buenos Aires and, sadly, we had to spend two days doing nothing but play paint ball games, eat steak and visit tango bars till 4 AM.

In 1996 the Atlantis women went to Hong Kong, the precursor to international women’s sevens. We won that tournament, but setting the stage for the future was the real outcome.

In 1997 the Atlantis men went to the “End of the world, 7s” in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. Artie Fitzpatrick looked around, shivering, at the beautiful ice-covered mountains in Tierra de Fuego national park, and commented, “this place would be beautiful in summer…oh, wait, it is summer!” We won that tournament and had a fabulous Argentine barbecue following it.

Scotland is a rugby country, right? Well, in Scotland the lightly-populated Isle of Mull isn’t a place that Scots think of when they think rugby. An Atlantis women’s team entered (and won) the tournament in 2002; the after-tournament event lived up to Mull’s contention that they are “the friendliest sevens in the world.” “Stetsons and sporrins” was the theme and we came suitably dressed.

Some of the best Atlantis tours have been co-ed tours, i.e. we take both a men’s and a women’s team. A typical start of tour scene took place on the 2002 tour to Brazil; we stopped in the São Paulo airport en route to Rio; the men and the women sat on opposite sides of the holding area keeping to themselves; by the end of the tour — which comprised, as most do — a fabulous rookie show, they were best friends.

For years, we would annually bring both men and women to the Caribbean Sevens in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Always a blast and the fine sessions were some of the funniest ever.

In 1996 Atlantis men went to Japan and discovered $10 beer and 90-minute trips to practice in Tokyo traffic. Other Atlantis men’s trips to high-level tourneys included Dubai in 1995 and Australia in 1997. The Adelaide Sevens, where we went 1-6 but our one win was against Queensland (!) (we lost to Western Province [SA], Wellington [NZ], Counties [NZ] and Northern Transvaal [SA]), was one of the most competitive in the world. While in South Australia, though, we also played in the quite-different Elizabeth Sevens; our hotel bar reminded us of the characters in the bar scene in Star Wars.

In recent years, one of the most exotic tours we’ve taken has been Borneo with the Atlantis women. Among the many places we visited while we were there was an Orangutan reserve (where I was smacked in the face by a monkey). In 2009 and 2011 the men’s Atlanteans visited Tahiti and Bora Bora for amazingly tough sevens in a relaxing and beautiful South Pacific environment.

I try really hard to get to out-of-the-way places for sevens, because a) what a great way to get to wonderful places I’d never otherwise get to! and b) I love sevens. Sevens is particularly amenable to these tours because with a dozen people (or maybe a couple more) you can sit at one table, travel in one van, be “all together” a lot more easily than a typical group of 30+ on a 15s tour.

Commercial: at the moment I’m trying to organize another one of those — an Atlantis women’s tour to Laos (!) which will be a 100% player-funded, $2000+ trip (wanna go?) Expensive,…but…can you imagine another reason to go to Laos!! I would have never known there was rugby there, had not one of my Princeton alums, who is in charge of women’s rugby in Laos, invited us. On our agenda besides playing: running some clinics for the local women.

And what I haven’t noted, but should have, is that this is not just about us, about “our team,” just as all rugby it’s equally about all the teams we play against and the friendships we make on tour.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, sevens is not just a great sport on its own, it’s a way to tour the world, to places you’d otherwise never go, to meet people, and with a perspective you could never otherwise have.