they take the leggings and feather collars of when they play, apparently.
If you hap­pen to see a group of large, fit, young lads wan­der­ing about the Wel­ling­ton streets this week, chances are you’ve either stumbled across the cast of Down­stage’s latest play ‘The Boys in the Band’ , or, and more likely, one of the Rugby Sev­ens teams that are in town for this week­end’s tour­na­ment.

More info here, draw here, res­ults here. Quick ref­er­ence for Fri­day’s pool play: New Zea­l­and plays Kenya at 3:12pm, the Cook Islands at 6:08pm, and wrap up the pool play by tak­ing on Sam­oa at 9:56pm (those later games all look to be cork­ers in fact, with South Africa v. Argen­tina, Fiji v. France and Eng­land v. Aus­tralia com­ing imme­di­ately before the last NZ game).

And don’t hold your breath on the NZ team defend­ing their crown. Poor old Titch is lament­ing (and rightly enough) his inab­il­ity to get a full-strength team togeth­er when the Super 14 teams are already play­ing pre-sea­son warm-ups, and won’t release play­ers for what is the highest pro­file sev­ens event in New Zea­l­and (and one of the top two or three in the world). As a res­ult, the NZ Her­ald reports that…

More than half of the squad to defend New Zeal­and’s IRB Wel­ling­ton sev­ens crown have nev­er played for their coun­try and coach Gor­don Tietjens will be “pleas­antly sur­prised” if his side can win the tour­na­ment.

“Pleas­antly sur­prised”? Still, we were hav­ing the same pess­im­ist­ic thoughts before the announ­cing of the host of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, so per­haps there is some hope.