Women’s Olympic champions New Zealand and reigning men’s HSBC SVNS league title holders Argentina confirmed their status as the world’s leading rugby sevens teams after sealing the HSBC SVNS 2025 League Winners titles on day one at Singapore Sports Hub’s National Stadium.

Singapore fans at the stadium also had much to cheer on Saturday, with the Singapore women’s rugby sevens team clinching the SEA 7s title with a 12-5 triumph over Malaysia. Thailand won the men’s title after beating Malaysia 10-5.

Singapore’s victory was an improvement from their runner-up finish last year, and captain Victoria Chew said: “It’s always a privilege playing on home soil. There’s a lot more pressure seeing all our loved ones in the stands but we showed up, stayed calm and composed for each other. We just played to the voices on the left and right. Malaysia put up a good fight. There was a lot of pressure, but I think ultimately at the end of the day, we trusted our process and that’s what got us to the try line. It’s the finals and anything can happen in the SEA 7s final. As a team, we were just very reactive and we knew that we just had to keep adapting as we go.

“It feels surreal, it doesn’t feel like it actually happened but we are soaking up the moment as a team and celebrating with our friends, our family and our team-mates in the stands. It’s something for all of us to celebrate together, not just with this team but with the whole rugby community. It shows that as a team we can really rise up to the challenge. Under a lot of pressure, like diamonds, we can glitter under that kind of pressure. We show up, rise up and just give it our all.”

In the HSBC SVNS SGP, the Black Ferns Sevens secured the top-four finish they required at the sixth and final regular season round of HSBC SVNS 2025, thanks to a pair of convincing victories over China and Brazil. They scored 86 points to top Pool A and secure their place in Sunday’s semi-finals in style.

Argentina were made to work hard for their league title, having lost their opening pool A match 26- 24 to South Africa in an end-to-end thriller, but they bounced back to beat Great Britain 19-12 and claim their place in Sunday’s semi-finals and in doing so, clinch the SVNS league title.

With the competition format in Singapore seeing the 12 teams in four pools of three teams each, only the top-ranked side in each pool would qualify for the semi-finals, while the others were left to battle it out in ranking play-offs.

The Black Ferns Sevens will face France while Canada play Australia in the other women’s semifinal. Meanwhile other results in the women’s competition on day one saw Great Britain and Fiji secure their places in the HSBC SVNS World Championship in Los Angeles on 3-4 May at the expense of Brazil, completing the line-up for the highly anticipated winner-takes-all event.

New Zealand vice-captain Risi Pouri-Lane said: “There’s definitely an element of relief but in a way that we’re so hard on ourselves to perform and to come out here in every tournament and put on a show for everybody and ourselves. “Everyone here, we work hard to be in those kind of moments so it is relief but also just an overwhelming sense of joy knowing that the whole squad that’s behind us that put us in a position to be here in those moments.

“We’re our harshest critics. We always strive for more, we always want more, and we always think that we haven’t actually reached our potential. There’s pros and cons to that because we’re so hard on ourselves but the pros to that is we’re always striving for greatness.”

In the men’s competition Kenya are through to their first semi-final on the HSBC SVNS Series in seven years after beating both Ireland and Olympic champions France on Saturday. The Shujaa hadn’t made the final four since the Hong Kong Sevens in 2018, where they went one further by reaching the Cup Final. Kenya will have to overcome an impressive Spain in the semi-final, while Argentina take on Fiji in what promises to be a classic encounter.

Argentina player Tobias Wade commented on the league title: “It’s pretty awesome. The team after the Olympics maintained completely the same guys so we tried to get an effort to train hard and try to repeat what we did last year. We worked really hard to do this again. The league is awesome, it’s a great prize for us because it is the whole year for us being competitive. It’s very important. Tomorrow we are playing semi-finals so we have to get our body recovered.”

Kenya’s Nygel Pettersan Amaitsa, who kicked a winning penalty against France to secure Kenya’s first semi-final since 2018 said: “Through the Challenger Series we always thought that we were the best so coming to the HSBC SVNS, our first season, we just had to prove that we can be here. “When we go to the changing room after the Ireland match, we just had to defeat France, we never had an option because we had to play our best and the results came.”

The eight men’s teams who will compete in the HSBC SVNS World Championship in Los Angeles are confirmed as Argentina, Fiji, Spain, South Africa, France, New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain. The women’s teams will be New Zealand, Australia, France, USA, Canada, Japan, Fiji and Great Britain.

Photo Credit: World Rugby

HSBC SVNS 2025 plays from 5 to 6 April 2025 at the National Stadium. Tickets available from Ticketmaster

For more details on public transport options to the Singapore Sports Hub, please refer here. Fans can also watch the HSBC SVNS action wherever you are in the world, either via broadcaster partners or on http://www.RugbyPassTV