The HSBC World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series Qualifier will be held on Thursday and Friday, 4-5 April.
The opening day of the tournament will be played at So Kon Po, across from the Hong Kong Stadium, while the full second day including the Cup semi-finals and final will be played inside the Hong Kong Stadium as part of the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens 2019 on Friday, 5 April.
The draw was held in Hong Kong on Monday, 11 March.
The 12 teams in the Qualifier are: Kenya and Uganda (Africa), Mexico (Americas North), Argentina and Brazil (Americas South), Hong Kong, Japan, Kazakhstan (Asia), Belgium, Poland and Scotland (Europe), Papua New Guinea (Oceania).
Prior to the draw, World Rugby banded the 12 teams into four groups, which were then drawn into the respective tiers of the pools.
Competition Format:
Upon completion of the Pool phase, the Teams in a pool are ranked one through four based on their cumulative match points and identified respectively as winner, runner-up and third and fourth place. At the end of the Pool phase, the 12 Teams will be ranked 1-12.
The top 8 teams will play in a knock-out format as follows:
Seed 1 v Seed 8
Seed 4 v Seed 5
Seed 3 v Seed 6
Seed 2 v Seed 7
The Winners proceed to the Cup Semi-Finals and the losers are knocked out of the tournament. The losers will be ranked from 5 to 8 according to the seeding from the pool phase.
The winners of the Cup semi-finals will compete for the Cup (first place). The losers of the Cup semi-finals are knocked out of the tournament and will be ranked 3rd and 4th according to the seeding from the pool phase.
The winner of the World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series Qualifier will be promoted to next season’s HSBC World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series, replacing the bottom-placed team at the completion of the current season.
The completed draw for the World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series Qualifier 2019 is as follows:
| Pool A | Pool B | Pool C | ||
Japan |
Kenya | Brazil | ||
| Belgium | Papua New Guinea | Argentina | ||
| Scotland | Hong Kong |
Kazakhstan |
||
| Mexico | Uganda | Poland |
