It was a fantastic start to the 18th Kings of Rugby at Apia Park Stadium and Taula Vaiala Ulalei Stadium at Vaiala on Thursday. 

The three-day tournament attracted 16 men's teams and six women's teams vying for the Queen of Sevens title.

"The tournament is called Kings of Rugby but we have now included women," said Fuimaono Sapani Pomare, the tournament director.

"As you all know, it's our 100-year celebration, so it's been years since our club and village have served in this sport.

"We kicked off our tournament today with pool games, pool games will resume tomorrow (Friday) for the men's and the Queen of Sevens will kick off theirs tomorrow. Then on Saturday, we will have our semi-finals and finals."

He acknowledged all the teams who competed on the first day of the tournament. He hoped that it would continue smoothly for the next two days.

"The hope is to restart this tournament again like we did in previous years," he said.

"We would also take this opportunity to thank all the teams that have responded to our quest to be part of this tournament. We had the urge to have more teams. 

"For this tournament, we had more than 32 teams when we started, then it dropped to 24, and now we have 16.

"We are trying to lift the level of our tournament this year. But this is all in the spirit of celebrating our 100 years of rugby. With the inclusion of women, we are hoping to push for more women to play rugby. We should continue to develop the sport in Samoa."

Fuimaono is happy with the teams from Savaii as it showed the hard work and effort of the people involved in the development of rugby on the big island. 

He is trying to push for more local players to be selected for Samoa's national teams both Manu Samoa and Manusina.

"The other team was the champion of the Marist tournament and the other team beat the winning team of the Marist tournament. We are seeing a lot of development and more talent coming from Savaii which shows that Savaii continues to develop the sport."

"My expectation of this tournament is to have more of our local players being selected into our national teams, especially for our women. There is still a need for our local women to be in the Manusina 15s and 7s."