Wales finished in third position behind Ireland and England to earn automatic promotion after the two legs were held in Zagreb and Budapest.
Last weekend in Hungary, Wales only conceded one try in pool play but racked up 141 points from their three games on Saturday. In their opening game they routed Croatia 50-5 before dismantling Denmark 41-0. In their final game of the day Wales prevailed 50-0 against Hungary.
Sunday got off to a flying start with a 36-7 victory against Sweden in the quarter-final before Wales’ winning streak was halted by England, who came away with a hard fought 24-5 triumph in the semi-final.
Pugh was obviously pleased with the promotion but left Budapest ruing the defeat to England.
“The ultimate goal was to get promotion out of the Trophy back to the Championship,” he said. “The boys achieved that; third place was a great achievement but it’s just a shame we couldn’t get the win against England in the semi-final.
“We didn’t convert against England – I felt we were playing well, especially on day one to do that, but we’ll take confidence from that now for the next stage.”
With victories proving hard to come by on the World Series, Pugh was delighted to see his squad take their chances when they came on offer.
“On day one our performances were very good,” he said. “We went out to play a simple style of sevens. We looked at our error rate, make sure we kept that down and it came to fruition with the tries we were scoring. So it was nice to get some confidence into the boys and see them get their rewards with that promotion.”
Morgan Williams goes on the attack against Croatia
Pugh was impressed with the Welsh defensive effort, particularly from the first day where only Croatia – once – found a way through the red wall.
“Again, that was a pleasing effort, there is a lot of space so you are going to concede tries in sevens, but we had that ruthless mindset even when you have gone three or four tries up to fight for everything and work back which showed good character from the boys,” said Pugh.
“We know we have a big month ahead with World Cup qualifying and Commonwealth Games selection, so boys wanted to put their hands up.
“We had an opportunity to look at Kane Tear-Bourge coming in as well, so it was great to see the speedster have a crack and the other boys who haven’t experienced many wins on the World Series, getting that opportunity to go out there and show what they are about.
“Winning breeds confidence and confidence comes from winning, so it goes hand in hand. We knew where we were – we pitched ourselves where we wanted to be and we achieved that but individually there are boys with just five or six Worl Series experience behind them so the more they are playing sevens the better they are going to get.”
