Dates 4 Dec 2015 – 22 May 2016 | ||
Host nations United Arab Emirates South Africa New Zealand Australia United States Canada Hong Kong Singapore France England Champion Fiji national rugby sevens team | ||
The 2015–16 World Rugby Sevens Series, known for sponsorship reasons as the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, was the 17th annual series of rugby union sevens tournaments for national men's rugby sevens teams. The Sevens Series has been run by World Rugby since 1999–2000. This season, the series expanded from nine to ten events.
Contents
Core teams
Fourteen teams from the 2014-15 season retained core status for the 2015–16 season:
A 15th team, Russia, claimed core team status for the 2015–16 series at the 2015 Hong Kong Sevens qualifier. They replaced Japan, which lost core team status, having finished last of the 15 core teams in the 2014–15 Sevens World Series.
Tour venues
The official schedule for the 2015–16 World Rugby Sevens Series is as follows:
Changes
There were three new tournaments in the series, with two events being discontinued:
Two other existing tournaments had venue changes:
Standings
Final standings after completion of the ten tournaments in the series:
Source: World Rugby. Archived
Dubai
The opening event of the season saw Fiji starting their defense of the title by taking out the opening event of the season in Dubai. On the opening day of competition, Fiji, South Africa and England each recorded three striaght wins to finish on top. New Zealand finished on top in their group but not before losing to the United States in Pool C.
South Africa got knocked out in the quarter finals by the United States but would still end up taking home the plate after they defeated Australia in the final. While for Fiji, they would take the Dubai Sevens after they initially came from behind to win against England and taking the early lead.
South Africa
After Dubai, the teams had a back to back with Cape Town being the next stop in the series.
Scoring leaders
Updated: 24 May 2016