The second weekend of the Madrid7 s saw both Shujaa and Lionesses finish second after falling 7-45 and 0-19 to eventual Champions Argentina and Russia respectively.
The Ladies final kicked off at 7:00 pm EAT; the Russians spotted and exploited a gap in the Lionesses defense landing a center post try. The conversion successfully splitting the posts. Moments later, as the Lionesses were attacking, a slow pass was swiftly intercepted and the Russians extended their lead to 12-0 as the conversion attempt was unsuccessful. The half-time scores read 12-0.
In the second half, a wide pass landed beautifully in the winger’s hands and she side-stepped her oncoming defender, easily making her way to the try line scoring their second converted try for a 19-0 score. Despite the Lionesses’ efforts in defense, the Russians were uncontainable and they denied Lionesses any chance of scoring. Full-time score reading 19-0.
The ladies had two pool matches on Saturday 27th February where they registered their first win beating hosts Spain 22-0 and suffered a 5-17 loss to Russia in the opening match. In their third pool match, Lionesses fell two points short as they lost 10-12 to Poland.
Shujaa was handed a 45-7 beating in the final by the double champions, Argentina. At the stroke of halftime, Shujaa had conceded four unanswered tries, three of those being successfully converted. Los Pumas leading 26-0. Come second half, Argentina landed their fifth try with the conversion slicing the posts for a 33-0 lead. Vincent Onyala’s dummy and 43M run saw him land Shujaa’s only try in this final with Daniel Taabu adding the extras. Argentina went on to add 12 more points in this second half, securing the second #Madrid7s victory.
In the pool stage, Shujaa had an 80% win rate as they won four of their five matches. On day one, they beat Portugal 26-12, USA 29-12, and Spain 19-17 before kicking off their day two activity with a 15-5 win over Chile. The loss came from Argentina who handed Shujaa a 19-36 loss.
The tournament was adopted the round-robin format where all teams played each other in the pool stages with the top two teams qualifying directly for the final.
The Kenya Rugby Union would like to thank the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage, National Olympic Council-Kenya, and World Rugby for providing support to these two teams and helping them go to Spain for this tournament that will help their preparations for the Tokyo Olympics later in the year.
SHUJAA(27th February)
Shujaa 26 – Portugal 12
Shujaa 29 – USA 12
Spain 17 – Shujaa 19
28th February
Chile 5 – Shujaa 15
Argentina 36 – Shujaa 19
Cup Final: Shujaa 7 – Argentina 45
LIONESSES(27th February)
Russia 17 – Lionesses 5
Lionesses 22 – Spain 0
28th February
Lionesses 10 – Poland 12
Cup Final: Lionesses 0 – Russia 19
Photos courtesy of the #Madrid7s media team
