NAIROBI, Kenya, January 23, 2025 – The Polish women’s rugby 7s team are already in Nairobi for Saturday’s friendly match against their Kenyan counterparts at the RFUEA Grounds.
The team held their first training session yesterday and are expected to conduct an another at the RFUEA Grounds on Friday — which will be open to media.
Both teams are using Saturday’s friendly to prepare themselves for the first and second leg of the World Rugby Challenger Series, set for Cape Town in March.
The first leg will be held on March 1-2, followed by the second one a week later.
The two teams will be fighting to qualify for the prestigious World Rugby Series, having failed to do so last year.
The top four teams from the 12-team series will proceed for playoffs in Los Angeles on May 3-4.
From there, the top four finishers will qualify for the World Series.
So close, yet so far
The Poles finished fourth at last year’s edition of the Challenger series with 40 points, two more than the Kenyans.
Consequently, the Eastern Europeans qualified for the play-offs in Madrid where they lost all their Pool A matches to China, Japan and Spain.
On the other hand, the Lionesses endured a disappointing end to the season in which they also missed out on qualification to the Paris Olympics.
They lost 24-7 to China at the finals of the Repechage in Monaco to bid bye to their dreams of a third consecutive Olympics appearance.
Kenya and Poland last faced each other at the third leg of the Challenger Series in Krakow in May last year, where the home team won 21-10 in the semis of the main cup.
