The 1999–2000 World Sevens Series was the first season of the global circuit for men's national

rugby sevens Rugby sevens (commonly known simply as sevens, and originally seven-a-side rugby) is a variant of rugby union in which teams are made up of seven players playing seven-minute halves, instead of the usual 15 players playing 40-minute halves. R ...

teams, organised by the

International Rugby Board World Rugby is the governing body for the sport of rugby union. World Rugby organises the Rugby World Cup every four years, the sport's most recognised and most profitable competition. It also organises a number of other international competit ...

(now known as World Rugby). The series ran from December 1999 to May 2000 and incorporated ten tournaments spread over five continents.

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

was the series champion, winning five of the tournament events.

Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...

finished as runner-up, eight points behind despite winning the remaining five tournaments. The leading try-scorer for the inaugural season was Fiji's Vilimoni Delasau, who notched 83 tries over the series.

Schedule

The official schedule of ten events was announced by the International Rugby Board (IRB) on 2 December 1999. Prominent existing sevens tournaments were included in the new series, for the most part. The

and

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

tournaments, however, were hosted as full international sevens events by their respective unions for the first time. An eleventh tournament, to be held in England, was considered but this did not come to fruition and was left off the calendar. The prestige of the

Hong Kong Sevens The Hong Kong Sevens ( zh, t=香港國際七人欖球賽, link=no) is a rugby sevens tournament held annually in Hong Kong on a weekend in late March or early April. Considered the premier tournament on the World Rugby Sevens Series competiti ...

was acknowledged by increasing the points scale awarded to teams at the tournament by an extra 50 per cent. This recognised the special status of the event organized by the Hong Kong Rugby Union, played over three days instead of two and incorporating 24 teams instead of the usual 16. The union had initially wanted the Hong Kong tournament to be the final stop of the tour, but this proposal had been rejected earlier by the IRB.

Final standings

The points awarded to teams at each event, as well as the overall season totals, are shown in the table below. Points for the event winners are indicated in bold. A zero (0) is recorded in the event column where a team played in a tournament but did not gain any points, however excludes teams that did not accumulate any points overall. A dash (—) is recorded in the event column if a team did not compete at a tournament. Source
World Rugby (archived)
Notes:

Tournaments

Dubai

The opening tournament of the brand new series saw the teams head over to Dubai with the three day event starting on the Wednesday with the international tournament being played on the Thursday and Friday. In the cup final, it was New Zealand that took out the cup final defeating Fiji by 24 points with

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

taking out the plate and bowl respectively.

South Africa

Punta del Este

Mar del Plata

Wellington

Fiji

Australia

Hong Kong

Japan

France

References

Sources

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:1999-2000 World Sevens Series World Rugby Sevens Series