Bassett's very own Ben Humphries has been selected for the Empire U19s Sevens squad for the forthcoming 2017 EMIRATES AIRLINE DUBAI RUGBY SEVENS tournament.
Everyone here at RWBRFC will be rooting for Ben and we wish the squad the very best of luck ahead of their first fixture against Leonard Barbarians on 30th November.
We asked Ben to give us a few details and he kindly took time out from training to write an article about the tournament:
"Just some background about information around Empire 7s..."
We are a team located within the South West of England with a current training base at Hartpury College. We are a team who have been invited to play in the Emirates Airline Dubai 7s U19. We are participating within the Invitational Tournament which features a range of teams from clubs from different countries, including national teams also. For example the winners of the Emirates Airline Dubai 7s U19 in 2015 was Team France.
Knowing this, our team has worked hard both on and off the field, especially on those cold mornings at 7am. I can recall waking up one week to frost on the grass and the coach still making us doing contact.
We jet off on 28th November for an overnight flight to Dubai international Airport. We will have the whole Wednesday off to shop and go to the beach. Wednesday night will be an early one as we have two games on the Thursday, first against Leopard Barbarians then later in the evening we will be playing Western Province Academy, also known as the Stormers Academy.
Once we have played that game we will be resting up and recovering in the hotel's pool. Then on the Friday we have a late afternoon game against North West Barbarian. Once these games are over we will get selected into a play off on the Saturday. Following these play-offs we will go and watch the Mens' games.
I wasn't selected in the original team to fly out, but there were injuries occurring and I always had a feeling in the back of my head that there was a chance that I could be going. I didn't hear anything for weeks but I stayed optimistic then got a phonecall asking if I could go out and play. I was ecstatic and said yes. Straight away I was on the phone to my parents and said I was going to Dubai.
I have always watched 7s on the TV and thought to myself what an amazing experience to travel around the world to play the sport I love. I've played a few charity 7s games in the past, but nothing fully serious. The main memory of playing in those games was my first ever game. I was slightly nervous as I've never played 7s before but I caught the ball off the kick off, fed the defender a dummy and ran the length of the pitch to score. After scoring and kicking the conversion from the touchline I whispered to myself "this is the sport for me."
On behalf of the whole squad, we would like to thank the following sponsors and companies who have made this all come together. Thank you to Evolution Global Aviation, Lansdowne Group and CR Hollands and I'd like to thank RWBRFC for featuring me here on the club website.
