World Rugby commentator Karl Tenana has labelled former Samoa 7s Captain, Uale Mai, as an extremely intelligent player.
As reported by World Rugby, Mai was one of Tenana’s top picks when he assembled his own line-up for the world’s best rugby 7s team.
“Uale was an extremely intelligent player, a chess master who could put all the right pieces in place and read all the twists and turns before they’d even occurred. I played against him a lot of times and always admired how he controlled the game. He didn’t necessarily score a lot of tries himself, but he was responsible for putting tries on a plate for others.” Said Tenana.
Even with his first-hand experience, Tenana admits selecting an all-time sevens team was no easy task.
In the end, he went for an all-southern hemisphere line-up, featuring three fellow New Zealanders, a Fijian, a Samoan, and one player apiece from South Africa and Argentina.
During his time on the pitch, Tenana won the Rugby World Cup Sevens, multiple HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series titles, and a gold medal at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, playing with and against some of the game’s greatest players.