I was there for both days. I thought it was really good. There are some issues around the location. I had corporate seats (food and drink included) but chose to drive as the transport there is a pain.
The Stadium is about 2km from Robina Town Centre, near where I parked, and it's a bit of a waste land in terms of things to do. Most people would stay at Surfers and with the debacle that is CG traffic it took over 50mins to drive from there to the ground.
Brisbane would be better but Ballymore would only work if they had bars and activities build for the weekend on the back fields and transport there is crazy. Suncorp would need at least 40K on each day for it to work. It does have all of the other requirements in place though.
Melbourne would probably be the best location as it has a good feel about it and most people I spoke to said they would be keen to fly down for a 7's weekend.
Bill Pulver spoke at the function I was at and conceded that the promotion of the tournament wasn't up to scratch. They need to start promoting 2014 today and not once all of the other things have finished. Every senior rugby club in Australia should be sent a GC7's end of season tour package, with fancy dress options attached. They need to let people know it's on.
In terms of the rugby played the Aussies did really well to make the finals. It would be great if we could follow the NZers lead and have a core of around 5 players who the team could be built around. You can see the difference a few of the older heads make when running down the clock and keeping the ball in hand.
I thought Jenkins had some outstanding moments but he makes some terrible mistakes. He needs to become more consistent, like the team. Walker looks like a better player. He took on the ball playing role at stages and that adds to his value.
I'm a big Con Foley fan and I think he's the type of guy who could be ear marked as a 7's regular.
O'Connor has a really good squad at the moment but there are a few who will move on after the season. We need to build on this and at least make the Semi's in Dubai to push for a top 4 spot.
I love the 7's and I can see some good things ahead for Australia in coming years.
Jets
Agree with your own and others' assessment of what a great event this is: I took my 15 year old son to the whole day yesterday and we both could not believe just how good it was in every aspect: entertainment, rugby skills on show and to a high consistent quality, atmosphere (despite c.13,000 crowd), international vibe of the best kind, quality of organisation throughout the day, a great stadium for the product, and so forth, Everyone I spoke to just loved it. I've been to many major sports events all over the world - without doubt, this one was one of the very best in its totality whilst also being a superb showcase for rugby in general.
However, the dark shadow over the whole spectacle is, as so often, the mindless and strategy-defiicent decision of the ARU to keep up their failed model of 'developing rugby (at great expense) in unproven secondary markets whilst even when the primary markets are suffering'. This failed model is often prosecuted with the distorting financial siren song of local or State government grants with parochial needs that work against the right long-term decisions being made.
As many above have rightly noted - other than when you get inside its perimeter, Skilled Park on the GC is a get-there-coveniently disaster. Parking is miles away and then there's a 10 min bus ride to get there, then after the bus there's another boring long walk through what looks like a permanent construction zone, the trip from the centre of the GC is not easy, etc. And it's far way from QLD''s rugby epicentre - Brisbane. Couple all that with really poor event marketing (see my early post on this above), and, of course, a commercial and fan-attendance-numbers disaster awaits and a truly exceptional opportunity to promote Aus and global rugby is lost over and over again.
Manifestly, the Aus 7s should be in Sydney or Brisbane, if possible rotating amongst these two cities annually. Forget every place that rugby is marginal to non-existant and is likely to remain that way if well-funded (though admittedly poorly run) S15 organisations have not been able to grow it (and the Rebels and Force have not). What we need to do is make 7s a strategic success in Australia and that will only be usefully commenced from the traditional heartlands, not Adelaide or Melbourne.
Give the tournament under contract to a crack Aus national event marketing company (ideally on some form of incentive contract linked to attendance and Fox viewership) skilled at such and remove it from the proven marketing incompetence and mediocrity within the ARU's HQ (which in any event Pulver is wisely restructuring).
Honestly, what we have in the local version of global 7s is a sports product of extraordinary quality and potential. Support it with the right core marketing and, critically, locational strategy, all executed by seasoned sports event marketing professionals (and further ramped by the Rio 2016 tie-in), and Aus rugby will really have something to be joyful and excited by, as well as something for which we can all be communally proud.
Edit added later: here we go again, the ARU's head of 7s is admitting that the GC's 2-day numbers never exceed 25,000-ish and yet he's offering full-blown support to keep Aus 7s at the GC and somehow we'll in time get it to the commercial and attendance status of the HKG etc 7s. Hopefully, this was just an instruction from above that he cannot possibly believe:
http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8738154
