There were no touts outside the gates of the National Stadium in Kallang yesterday. It was a far cry from those scenes last weekend when punters paid exorbitant sums to buy a precious ticket to enter the soldout Hong Kong Sevens in So Kon Po.
Tickets were plentiful as the Standard Chartered Singapore Sevens got under way in front of an almost empty 60,000-seater stadium yesterday. The official figure was 13,000 tickets sold, but there were large swathes of empty concrete with only a few thousand diehard rugby fans ignoring overcast skies to make the trek to watch the sixth leg of the IRB Sevens series.
'I think the rain kept a lot of people away. But they tell me they expect a bigger crowd tomorrow for the final day,' said Beth Coalter, IRB Sevens manager. 'Every tournament is different. You really can't compare this with Hong Kong. But for the players, it is all the same as they take every event seriously.'
There might have been no South Stand. But the music was throbbing - a far better selection was played than in Hong Kong - and there was plenty of dancing in the aisles. Singapore rocked even if the crowds stayed away.
And some things don't change with the action being red-hot as favourites Fiji, England, South Africa and New Zealand all moved into the Cup quarter-finals - and Australia continuing to be booed.
It was hard going for Asia's smaller representative sides. Apart from hosts Singapore, both Hong Kong and China also ended the first day of competition winless in the preliminary round.