Nairobi beckons.
While the USA women's team has been active in their SVNS Series, and will be again this coming weekend, the men have had to wait.
Yes they played in the Coral Coast 7s in Fiji as a warmup, but they haven't played in a World Series event yet.
Asked if he's been aching to play, USA captain Stephen Tomasin gave a little laugh.
"Yeah, it's been ... it's been tough," said Tomasin. "Training as hard as we do, for seven months before you get to really play at the high-level stuff like we want to play is ... it's tough. It has tested us as a team from a chemistry and cohesion point. Obviously every day of training is important, but when there's not competition on the other side, sometimes you start to go at each other a little bit. But that, I think, is a strong suit of this team, and we kept our focus on the main thing, and that was preparation. So I'm proud of the boys for just how we how we've worked through the last eight months."
That's pretty straightforward. They are climbing the walls waiting to get into the competition. Finally they will February 14-15 in Nairobi, Kenya, they will play in the six-team round-robin with Belgium, Uruguay, Germany, Kenya, and Canada. All six teams will run out against each other in a total of 15 games in three tournaments in Nairobi, Montevideo, and Sao Paulo. It's a pretty simple goal—be good enough to make the top four of this group and you join the SVNS 1 group for the final three tournaments of the year.
The format means there's an equality of it—not pools, so no lopsided draws, for example. Winning a leg is important, but more than that is wins and losses.
