Date of birth | 6 June 1982 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Place of birth | Fiji | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 1.74 m (5 ft 9 in) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 77 kg (12 st 2 lb; 170 lb) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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William Ryder (born 6 June 1982) is a Fijian rugby union footballer. Ryder is well known within the rugby sevens community, as he has produced some of the best performances for the Fiji national sevens side. He is well known for his try scoring capability and goosestepping defenders. He was also one of the top try scorers of the World Sevens Series which has been overtaken recently. He has scored over 752 points to-date of which he has scored 105 tries. [1] He was a part of the team that won the sevens world cup in 2005 and also won a bronze medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia for the rugby sevens event.
Ryder played club rugby in Japan with Toyota Verblitz but he left and joined the Fiji sevens team for the 2009–10 IRB Sevens World Series. On 17 May 2011 it was announced that he had signed for Stade Montois. He wanted to join the Fiji team in 2013 under the guidance of Ben Ryan for the first time in 3 years but was left from the final squad as Ryan stated he is not as fit as he was three years ago. He kept on playing for local clubs in the domestic tournament to book a place in the Fiji team but it was unsuccessful all throughout the years.
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.
Waisale Tikoisolomoni Serevi is a Fijian former rugby union football player and coach, and is a member of the World Rugby Hall of Fame. Serevi is renowned for his achievements in rugby sevens, while also enjoying a long career in fifteen-a-side rugby at both club and national team levels. Nicknamed "The Wizard" by commentators, he is widely considered to be the greatest rugby sevens player in the history of the game. A biography of Serevi titled Waisale Serevi: King of Sevens by Nick Darvenzi was published in 2018.
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 Dubai 7s is an annual rugby sevens and social event held at The Sevens Stadium in Dubai, UAE. Founded in 1970, the event is the longest running sports event in the Middle East.
The 2005–06 World Sevens Series was the seventh edition of the global circuit for men's national rugby sevens teams, run by the International Rugby Board since 1999-2000. The series was won by Fiji in the last event of the competition, ending New Zealand's 6-year run as series champions. Fiji needed to finish in fifth place or higher at the London Sevens to ensure that they would win the series ahead of England, but won the tournament handily with 54–14 victory over Samoa in the final.
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Ben Ryan is an English sports coach who is best known for coaching the Fiji sevens team to a gold medal in sevens rugby at the 2016 Rio Olympics. He is currently Performance Director at EPL association football club Brentford.
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Marcus Epi Satavu is an American rugby union player. He is of Fijian descent and has played senior level rugby with such teams as OMBAC, Mystic River and most recently, New Haven RFC. He has represented the United States playing rugby sevens, making his USA 7s debut at the Tokyo Sevens during the 2013–14 IRB Sevens World Series.
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