by Nigel Melville
Nigel Melville Direct

Last night the representatives of the HSBC World Sevens Series hosts rolled into Vegas and met over dinner to set the agenda for today’s sevens advisory group meeting. The SAG meet once a year in person and on other occasions via conference call, but today we get chance to spend a whole day looking at the Series with the IRB and charting its future. The first part of the day will be spent discussing the Host Union Agreement, the document that all Unions sign setting out the agreed standards for each event, this includes the player welfare issues, commercial boundaries and broadcast deliverables.

This afternoon, we will move to commercial opportunities and one key agenda item for USA Rugby is the development of the Women’s Series that is being developed this year and increasing the number of event sin 2013 and beyond.

I think its crucial that we have a Women’s series, currently the Women’s Sevens Competition program is ad hoc, attendance varies from competition to competition and all teams need more opportunities to build their teams. Hopefully by the time I arrive at the Women’s opening banquet this evening, we will have plans to expand the events and that the USA has the opportunity to host one of these events.

Ahead of the banquet I am calling in to meet the Women’s Eagles teams on the eve of their tournament to wish them well and find out how there preparation has been gone.

Good luck also to all the teams competing in the Las Vegas Invitational event, I am looking forward to watching the rugby, not long to go now, the excitement is growing!

With an impressive resume as player, coach and administrator, Nigel David Melville took over as CEO and President of Rugby Operations of USA Rugby, the National Governing Body of the sport in America, in 2006.  In addition to his full time job promoting the sport in the U.S., Melville has launched his own blog, Nigel Melville Direct, to further the discussion and his passion for what it will take to make the U.S. a great rugby playing nation.

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