🏉 Sevens Heaven

Good morning, it's Tuesday, 30 August. It's a great time to be an Aussie rugby fan. The Wallabies beat the Springboks on Saturday, the All Blacks lost (again!), the Women's Rugby World Cup starts in October and the Sevens teams are world champions. How rucking good! 

⏱ 1,401 words = 6 minutes

👀 Free beer? FREE BEER!   

THE MAIN GAME

🏉 Aussie Sevens to party like it's 1999

Australia's group of misfits has conquered the world. 

Golden points: Australia won the bronze medal in the final World Rugby Sevens event in Los Angeles yesterday morning and that was enough to win the overall world title for the 1st time since the comp started back in 1999. 

• The season went for 9 events, starting back in November, and each event was like a mini World Cup with a group stage, elimination finals and medals for the winners.

• Points were on offer too and they're really important. Win an event and earn 22 points, come 2nd and get 19, 3rd gets 17 and so on. The team with the most points at the end of the season (excluding its 2 lowest scores) is crowned world champion. That's us!

• Consistency is the key and that's exactly what Australia was all season. The Aussie won only one event but finished in the top 4 7 times. South Africa won 4 events, but those were its only top 4 finishes, so Australia won 126 points to South Africa's 124.

• It's been quite the turnaround for Australian sevens rugby. Both the men's and women's sides were medal favourites at the Tokyo Olympics last year but were eliminated in the quarter-finals.

• It led to a classic footy review and it was decided a switcheroo was needed. The men's and women's teams swapped coaches and it worked wonders. The women's side won its 3rd world title this year and the Commonwealth Games gold medal, while the men's side finally has its 1st title.

They said it: "There’s guys that deserved it but didn’t get opportunities (elsewhere), and they’ve been part of this misfits tag that we’ve sorted of being enjoying," - Aussie men's coach John Manenti, who took over a team with only 6 full-time players and a group that was dragged from all over the world. 

Watch it: Here are the highlights from the event in LA plus the trophy preso which is great to watch if you're an Aussie rugby fan. 

QUICK SINGLES

⛳️ Golf: Rory McIlroy is $26 million richer after storming home to win the Tour Championship. McIlroy has had his hands full fighting the breakaway LIV Tour this season but he put that all behind him to overcome a 6-shot deficit to men's world #1 Scottie Scheffler to win his 3rd Tour Championship by one shot and the big prize money that goes with it. He was asked about the LIV Tour after the win and said he hates what it's doing to golf, and he could hate it more with 6 big names expected to sign on this week. 

🏉 NRL: Souths are set to ignore Albo's tip and leave Cook on the back burner. South Sydney aren't likely to rush back star dummy half Damien Cook back from COVID-19 for the huge match against the Roosters this Friday night. As it stands right now he'll still be in isolation until Saturday anyway, but reports say PM (and Souths fan) Anthony Albanese gave Souths the tip that COVID-19 isolation might be dropping from 7 days to 5 so Cook would be right to play. But the Rabbitohs are unlikely to risk Cook infecting his teammates with the finals just around the corner. 

🏉 AFLW: One week into the new AFLW season and there's already a bit of controversy. Geelong's Georgie Prespakis held her nerve to slot home a goal with a minute left to beat the Tigers 15-11 on Sunday afternoon. The only thing is the AFL says Prespakis shouldn't have taken the kick. Prespakis was awarded a free kick for a dangerous tackle but it should have gone to a player close to the ball. The result won't be changed so play on.  

🎾 Tennis: The 1st big name has been knocked out of the US Open. Romanian #7 seed Simona Halep has been beaten by Ukrainian world #124 Daria Snigur 6-2 0-6 6-4 in Snigur's 1st grand slam appearance. No problems for men's top seed Daniil Medvedev and local favourite Coco Gauff, they both won through the second round in straight sets.

• 📺 At 9am AEST today Serena Williams plays Danka Kovinic in her 1st round match. That's followed by Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis in the doubles. Watch it on 9Gem and 9Now.

🏉 College sports: The luck of the Irish graced fans at a US college football match with... FREE BEER! The Nebraska Cornhuskers played the Northwestern Wildcats in Dublin, Ireland on the weekend and more than 42,000 fans turned up to watch at Aviva Stadium. But shortly after kick-off, the stadium's payment provider crashed. Not wanting to dampen the fan experience, the stadium made everything, including beer, free! As you can imagine the queues were a mile long when word got out. 

LEFT OF FIELD

⚾️ Baseball: If you have any old sports trading cards we suggest you keep them in mint condition and lock them away in a safe place because they could be worth a fortune. Don't believe us, well a baseball trading card of New York Yankees legend Mickey Mantle has been auctioned off for $18.3 million. The story goes that 5,500 1952 cards in top condition, which included more than a few Mickey Mantle cards, were sold to a collector near Boston in 1986 for US$125,000. 5 years later, one of those Mantle cards was sold for US$50,000 but nobody knew who it was. 31 years later we know it was Anthony Giordano who made a nice little profit from that purchase. Apparently, the auction was dragging on so 75yo Giordano went to bed when the bidding hit $10 million and got his kids to tell him how it went when he woke up. 

📽 Highlight reel: The US Open is underway and 2012 men's singles champion Andy Murray is through to the 2nd round. Check out this epic rally which makes us tired just watching it. 

📸 Photo finish: We're a few days early for Throwback Thursday but former Aussie fast bowler Brett Lee shared a pic of a Six And Out reunion. Lee can bowl, can throw and can sing - sort of... 

THE POLLING BOOTH

Monday's result: 40.43% reckon prime Shaq could make it in the NRL. 

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

• 🎾 9:00am - US Open - Williams v Kovinic, 1st Round - Flushing Meadows, New York - 9gem, 9now, Stan Sport

All times AEST

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