Rugby-Seychelles’ junior and senior teams scoreless in Safari Sevens |07 July 2005

With just six months’ training, the country’s first ever junior team suffered from stage fright in their first match against the Nairobi team whose game was very quick and their players performed very well.

The Seychelles team, whose line of attack was led by Bruce Amesbury and Guibson Servina, fought bravely according to a Seychelles Rugby Association (SRA) spokesman, but suffered six defeats against Nairobi (59-0), the Western team (64-0), Tanzania (45-0), Nyanza (71-0), Rift Valley (50-0) and Tanzania (14-0).

Other than Guibson and Bruce, the other young players who made the trip to Kenya were
Naddy Servina, Aubrey Labrosse, Michel Lesperance, Virtheep Kumar, Marco Mathiot, Fred Hypolite, Jeff Samson and Sylvio Sirame.

Despite losing heavily, the young players received words of encouragement from the manager of Bristol Select University, Bob Reeves, and from Fijian all-time great rugby sevens player Waisale Serevi.

Doreen Julie and Etienne Constance accompanied the young players on the trip.

Not even the senior team could score a try in Nairobi. Drawn in a tough pool along with two professional sides – Samoa and Western Province from South Africa – it was always going to be a difficult task for the Seychelles team.

Poor handling of the ball and sloppy defending did not help the inexperienced Seychelles team in their five games.

They lost 52-0 to Madagascar, 55-0 to Samoa, 24-0 to Uganda, 80-0 to Western Province and 36-0 to Kenya’s Chairman’s Select.

Winners of a competition in France before competing in Kenya and ranked sixth worldwide on the International Rugby Board’s sevens circuit, Samoa won the competition, defeating Western Province 57-5 in the final.