EThe men’s national rugby sevens coach, Paco Hern�ndezhas confirmed that the Spanish Rugby Federation “has presented a resource by the absence of Pap� New Guinea” in the pre-olympic repechage which begins this Friday in Monaco, since he considers that it “deprives” Spain “of qualify for all the points in the group stage“.
The daddies, Spain’s rivals in the group stage, were disqualified of the tournament due to a problem with his always and the international federation decreed that “their matches would count as not playedneither won nor lost”, so “they will report zero points“to his adversaries.
“Then, at most, we could add six points in the first (phase) and the teams from the rest of the groups could get up to nine“, explains Hernandez to EFE.
The Andalusian coach admitted that “it seems that this was” foreseen previously “in the tournament regulations, but it is a bit illogical that it is stated like this because, in the end, The most affected are the teams that are here and not the team that has not come,” he added that “it is not fair because it totally distorts the competition.”
The Granada native said, however, that “I knew that this tournament was going to be very tough, so it is preferable take the positive: you take away a game from the group and although the path becomes a little more complicated, there are five games to win instead of six.”
“It’s not something I particularly like, because I think we had the ability to stay first on the good side of the picture, but that’s it, this is what it is. Let’s get a little bit cooler on Sunday, which is when the tournament is defined with three games,” said Paco Hernández.
