NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 3 – Shujaa’s hopes of climbing off the relegation zone in the World Rugby Sevens Series standings suffered another blow after a fruitless tour of Hong Kong, where they failed to win a single match.
The Kenya Sevens boys picked up only one point from the campaign, remaining rooted at 13th spot with 30 points.
According to the World Rugby tournament rules for this season, the 15th ranked core team based on accumulated Series points following the 10th round in Toulouse will be relegated.
The teams ranked 12th, 13th and 14th at the end of Toulouse will enter a four-team relegation play-off together with the Challenger Series 2023 winners at the eleventh and final round of the Series in London.
The relegation play-off will be round-robin format with the top two teams then playing a final. The winner will become the 12th core team on the 2024 Series, while the other three teams will enter their respective Regional Sevens Championships in order to qualify for the 2024 World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series.
In the standings, Shujaa are 10 points away from the 11th place safe zone, currently occupied by Spain.
After Hong Kong, the team flies out to Singapore this coming weekend, before the crucial leg in Toulouse on May 12-14.
In Hong Kong this past weekend, the team lost all its pool matches, going down 29-5 to New Zealand, 26-14 to Ireland and 26-17 to South Africa.
They dropped to the ninth place battle, but they lost the quarters 26-12 to Samoa., moving further down to the 13th place play-off where they lost 19-10 to Hong Kong China.
Heading to Singapore this weekend, the team has its work cut out to attempt accumulate more points than Spain, before the crucial tour of France next month.
