7SWGPS: France beats Russia in dramatic final

The first leg of the Rugby Europe Women's Sevens Grand Prix Series at Kazan's Central Stadium ended with the victory of the defending champions, France. In the final match, Team France defeated Russia with a score of 22-12.

Great Britain 1 and Ireland, two losing semifinalists, faced off in the third place match. The British whitewashed the rivaling team, 32-0, and took bronze. As was reported earlier, the tournament in Kazan brought together 12 teams representing 11 countries: Great Britain 1, Great Britain 2, Russia, France, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Netherlands, Ukraine. The European champion will be determined based on the results of two legs. The second leg will be held in September in Brive (FRA).

The top three place finishers were awarded medals; France was also presented with a cup. Present at the awarding ceremony were Chairman of the Sevens Rugby Committee, Howard Thomas; Vice-President of the Russian Rugby Union, Vladimir Pavlov; First Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports of the Republic of Tatarstan, Khalil Shaikhutdinov, and other officials.

After the victorious match, the French team captain, Fannie Horta, explained what helped her team to gain an upper hand over Russia. "We won thanks to our mobility, speed on the field and constant attacks. It's a very important victory for our team. The match against Russia turned out to be the toughest one at the tournament," she admitted. The French team captain gave thumbs-up to the management of the Kazan tournament.

As for the Russian captain, Marina Petrova, she assumed the full responsibility for her team's failure. "I ruined the game; I haven't proved myself as a team leader. Young, unexperienced players put their faith on such people like me; they believe that leaders will lead the team after them. Leaders have no right to perform the way I performed today," the Russian team captain said.

Commenting on the reasons of defeat, Petrova said: "Probably, we got overstressed or, on the contrary, were too confident and relaxed on the field. I cannot say that we had underestimated the rivaling team. We did our best but we failed to convert our chances, to complete our attacks; we made too many mistakes," she said.

When asked about the upcoming Olympic qualification event in Dublin (IRL) and Russia's principal rivals, Ireland and Spain, Marina said: "We will have enough time to recover and, more importantly, to correct our errors; we had a lot of them. Ireland is a team that we can crack. Spain didn't bring its main roaster to Kazan but we know that they are able to put up a fight. At the moment we need to cool our head, to calmly analyse our mistakes and to do our best to correct them."

On June 25-26, the Russian team will travel to Dublin (IRL) where they will compete for the last berth to the 2016 Olympic Games. The tournament will feature 16 teams and only the winner will earn the qualification for Rio (BRA). The Russian team were seeded in Group A together with Samoa, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.

11th place match

Ukraine — Finland, 19-0 (19-0)

9th place match

Italy — Belgium, 12-0 (0-0)

7th place match

Netherlands — Portugal, 12-7 (12-7)

5th place match

Spain — Great Britain 2, 0-44 (0-17)

3rd place match

Ireland — Great Britain 1, 0-32 (0-10)

Final

France — Russia, 22-12 (17-5)