The Rugby World Cup is a men's rugby union tournament contested every four years between the top international teams, the winners of which are recognised as the World champions of the sport.
The SVNS, known as the HSBC SVNS for sponsorship reasons, is an annual series of international rugby sevens tournaments run by World Rugby featuring national sevens teams. Organised for the first time in the 1999–2000 season as the IRB World Sevens Series, the competition was formed to promote an elite-level of international rugby sevens and develop the game into a viable commercial product. The competition has been sponsored by banking group HSBC since 2014.
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 competitions, such as the World Rugby Sevens Series, the Rugby World Cup Sevens, the World Under 20 Championship, and the Pacific Nations Cup.
Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It has previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Super Rugby started as the Super 12 in the 1996 season with 12 teams from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, building on competitions dating back to the South Pacific Championship in 1986. The Super 12 was established by SANZAR after the sport became professional in 1995. After the COVID-19 pandemic forced the competition to split into three, the reformed competition in 2021 only included teams from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands.
Rugby sevens 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. Rugby sevens is administered by World Rugby, the body responsible for rugby union worldwide. The game is popular at all levels, with amateur and club tournaments generally held in the summer months. Sevens is one of the most well distributed forms of rugby, and is popular in parts of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and especially in the South Pacific.
The Stormers is a South African professional rugby union team based in Cape Town in the Western Cape that competes in the United Rugby Championship, a trans-hemispheric competition that also involves sides from Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. They competed in the Super Rugby competition until 2020.
Rugby World Cup Sevens (RWCS) is the quadrennial world championship of rugby sevens, a variant of rugby union. Organised by World Rugby, it currently consists of men's and women's tournaments, and is the highest level of competition in the sport outside of the Summer Olympics.
The New Zealand national rugby sevens team competes in the World Rugby Sevens Series, Rugby World Cup Sevens, Summer Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games. They have won a record 14 World Rugby Sevens Series titles.
Rugby union in South Africa is a highly popular team sport, along with cricket and soccer, and is widely played all over the country. The national team is among the strongest in the world and has been ranked in at least the top seven of the World Rugby Rankings since its inception in 2003. The country hosted and won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and won again in 2007, 2019 and 2023.
Sharni Maree Williams is a female Australian rugby union player. She has played in the centre position for Australia, the Brumbies, and from 2008 to 2012 for the Canberra Royals. She won a gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
The New Zealand women's national rugby sevens team represents New Zealand in the World Rugby Sevens Series, Rugby World Cup Sevens, Summer Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games.
Sarah Hirini is a New Zealand women's rugby union player and two-time Olympic medalist. She plays for the New Zealand women's national rugby sevens team, and captained the Manawatu Sevens side that took out the 2013 National Women's Sevens title in Queenstown. She was named in the squad for the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup.
The 2015–16 World Rugby Sevens Series, known for sponsorship reasons as the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, was the 17th annual series of rugby union sevens tournaments for national men's rugby sevens teams. The Sevens Series has been run by World Rugby since 1999–2000. This season, the series expanded from nine to ten events.
Gayle Broughton is a former New Zealand rugby union sevens player who played for the New Zealand women's national rugby sevens team. She made her international debut for New Zealand in 2014 and called time on her rugby career in March 2022. She had scored 315 points in 112 World Series matches. and has won every trophy on offer in the sevens game. Her accomplishments include six World Rugby Sevens series titles, Olympic Games gold and silver medals, Commonwealth Games gold and winning the Rugby World Cup Sevens.
Stacey Fluhler is a New Zealand rugby union player. She plays fifteen-a-side and seven-a-side rugby union, and is a member of the New Zealand Women's Sevens team and New Zealand Women's National Rugby Union team. Fluhler was a member of the New Zealand Women's Sevens team when they won a gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. She was also a member of the New Zealand fifteen-a-side team which won the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup and the 2021 Women's Rugby World Cup.
Michaela Blyde is a New Zealand professional rugby sevens player and Olympic gold medalist. She was the first female player to win back-to-back World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year titles in 2017 and 2018. Blyde holds the record for the most tries by a New Zealand women sevens player in a single match and also the record for most tries in a single fixture when she scored five tries against England in Langford in 2017. Blyde has won gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, 2018 Sevens World Cup, 2018 Commonwealth Games and six Sevens titles. In December 2023 She was the second woman to score 200 tries in the HSBC international seven series.
The World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series is an annual series of international rugby sevens tournaments run by World Rugby that includes men's and women's events. Sponsored by banking group HSBC, it is the second tier of competition below the World Rugby Sevens Series. Teams on the respective men's and women's tours of the Challenger Series compete for promotion to the first tier as a core team.
Tenika Willison is a New Zealand rugby sevens player. She played for Chiefs Manawa in the Super Rugby Aupiki competition. She also plays for the Black Ferns sevens internationally and won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
The 2023–24 SVNS is the 25th annual series of rugby sevens tournaments for national sevens teams, known as the World Rugby Sevens Series (SVNS). It is taking place between December 2023 and June 2024. The Sevens Series has been run by World Rugby since 1999. It is the first season in which the series format changed.
The 2023 Dubai Sevens or SVNS DXB was a rugby sevens tournament played at The Sevens. Twelve men's and women's teams participated.
Argentina 
Australia 
Fiji 
France 
New Zealand 
