P.O.H’s second tournament of the summer was up the coast near Cadiz at the Puerto Santa Maria sevens. Excellent facilities, a pitch by the beach and teams from all over Portugal, Spain, Wales (and Gibraltar) descended on the Puerto in search of the 3000 EUR prize money.

P.O.H were lucky enough to count on the support of Iain Balshaw of England as waterboy, and Justin Marshall of New Zealand as a (pretty useful) player. Both mentioned the experience being the rugby highlight of their careers....

P.O.H were drawn in what looked like a difficult group featuring the regional Andalucia team made up of the best players from the Andalucia based teams and Alcobendas, a division de honor (premiership equivalent) team from Madrid, with only the top team progressing to the second group stage. P.O.H recorded excellent wins against both sides and went on to face Valencia who had knocked out Tumble RFC from Wales, and Cascais from portugal, and Viator Barbarians who featured three Spanish national squad players. P.O.H played the best sevens of the tournament beating Valencia easily before defeating Viator in the best game of the tournament by far. The final put P.O.H up against Viator for a second time (after Viator also beat Valencia in the second group stage) but the tides were turned when Justin Marshall and captain Joey Garcia were injured within the first 3 minutes of the game. Matthew focker Pardo was also yellow carded for a late challenge only minutes later. With only a few subs and extremely hot and dry conditions P.O.H were not able to keep themselves in the game and went down to the Viator side. We will be back next year...

The post event tournament was a huge success with P.O.H leading the charge and offering up their internationals to some pretty scary funnel drinking. Justin and Iain also presented the prizes. Everyone ended up in Tarifa (eventually). A great day and some really promising rugby from P.O.H so plenty to look forward to in the future.