Tendencies of the competitive activity for rugby seven

Abstract

This article is aimed at a prospective analysis of the development and evolution of rugby seven and its main objective is to study the trends of competitive activity according to the transformations of its characteristics, taking as a basis the “toolbox of strategic foresight”. To determine the characteristics of both the competitive exercise and the activity, eleven reference indicators were used for the analysis of internal factors and three for external ones; the rugby seven regulations (6 documents) for the world championships corresponding to the years 2009, 2013, 2018 were analyzed as they were the three largest international events before the Olympic participation; as well as observations and indirect measurements through the video technique, to 61 rugby seven matches, counting and tabulating the competitive performance of the players. The selection criteria were directed to the number of actions carried out by the parties, representing the average of the most demanding matches for each sex, in addition to the times of completion and the evolutionary analysis of the regulations. The five most representative stages in the evolution of rugby seven were determined from its inception in 1883, until the reintegration of rugby as an Olympic sport and the ratification of rugby seven in Tokyo 2020. As a result, the characterization indicators allowed determining the fundamental requirements of the last three evolutionary stages of Rugby Seven and thus establish, based on the trends of competitive activity, a prediction of the possible transformations that competitive exercise would undergo.