Wales storm back to lift Sevens Plate

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Wales emerged as Plate winners at the end of the three-day Cathay Pacific/Credit Suisse Hong Kong Sevens after defeating Argentina 26-19 in front of a 40,000-capacity crowd.

The win enabled Wales to maintain their incredible run of taking titles home since they made their re-entry to World Series Sevens.

“This was particularly satisfying given the short time we’ve had to mould a team,” said Wales sevens coach Gareth Baber.

“The players have done very well here, but a lot of that is down to the fact that we have some intelligent core players.
“We can now go on to Australia for the Adelaide sevens with some confidence, though with both Australia and New Zealand in our group it will be tough.

For some of our players, competing in back-to-back tournaments will be hard, mentally and physically.”

In the final, Wales had to fight back after trailing Argentina 19-5 at the break. Second half scores from Alec Jenkins, replacement Beach and Tal Selley, to add to the first-half score from Wayne Evans, saw Wales overtake the Pumas.

Wales reached the semi-final of the Plate with a 20-7 win over Italy in a scrappy game.

Evans put Wales on the winning path and, when Rhodri McAtee sped in from 30 metres, the Welsh had a 10-0 interval advantage.

A second try by Evans consolidated the lead before Italy, from their one attacking move, scored through Chris Burton.
Wales, however, made sure of progression to the semi-final with a late try by replacement James Lewis.

In the semi-final against the United States, Wales did the damage in the first half with tries by Richard Mustoe, McAtee and Jonathan Edwards for a 15-0 lead.

Selley completed the job even though Wales had to play four minutes of the second half with only six players, yellow cards for Mustoe and Jenkins costing them three tries in a 22-19 nail-biter.

The overall tournament winners were Samoa who sprang a surprise on Fiji to win 27-22.

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