West Indies, in confident mood after their impressive showing at the Chile Sevens last weekend, were hit with a body blow ahead of today’s opening matches in Mar Del Plata, Argentina.

Jonathan Cassidy, whose form was central to the success that West Indies enjoyed in reaching the Bowl semi-finals in Santiago, is returning to England today because of a death in the family. His place will be taken by Nathan Browne, the Bermuda player who featured in the London and Wales legs of the iRB World Sevens Series in 2000-01.

“The tournament last week left us with four players carrying injuries,” said Neil Brooks, the West Indies manager. “Just to cover ourselves we brought Nathan down and he arrived this morning.”

Browne joined immediately in yesterday’s training, which Brooks said went off “very well” as the Caribbean underdogs prepared to engage in Group A, which includes champions New Zealand and Argentina who contested the final in Santiago, and France.

West Indies, whose previous best outing was reaching the Bowl final in Hong Kong last year, defeated Chile in their opening group match last week and then saw off Uruguay before losing to Canada.

Brooks added: “Coming off the Chile tournament, the expectation is high. We performed really well as we thought we could do. The training has gone very well all week. We’re actually developing a few new patterns of play, bringing a few more ideas into it based on what other teams are doing on offence and defence.”

Bermuda’s Josh McGavern sat out training yesterday as did Geoff Gregory, the UK-based player from Jamaica, who is West Indies’ leading try-scorer in the series. But Brooks believes they will be fit to answer the call when Argentina are first up this afternoon at 3.20 p.m. Bermuda time.

“Both of those players are pretty crucial in terms of their style of rugby and the pattern of rugby we’ve been playing,” Brooks said. “Gregory has certainly been one of the more impressive we’ve had in terms of finding the gap and going for it.”

West Indies face the all-conquering Kiwis, who have won the first two legs of this season’s series, at 6.04 p.m. and close against France at 8.16 p.m. “We’re identifying a game where we think we can get something out of it,” Brooks said. “We’re focusing on the France game. In seven-a-side rugby, France can be very, very good, but they can have a shocker as well.

“It all depends on how they gel together. If we can win that, we get an easier game the following day in the Bowl round. But it is well looking like we could be playing Chile again in one of the Bowl semi-finals.

“A lot of people were saying that it was an upset what we’ve done in beating Chile and Uruguay. But all along we’ve been thinking that we’ve got a very good squad here. Certainly, thinking back to Cardiff, London and Hong Kong, it’s a better group of players, a more talented pool of players.

“The three UK-based players have brought the Caribbean players on and the whole attitude and professionalism is taking a step up this time compared to other tours we’ve had.”

The groupings:

Group A: New Zealand, Argentina, France, West Indies.

Group B:<$> Australia, England, Chile, Paraguay.

Group C: Fiji, South Africa, Canada, Brazil.

Group D: Samoa, Wales, United States, Uruguay.

West Indies: Derek “Bobby” Hurdle (Bermuda); Josh McGavern (Bermuda); Danny McGavern (Bermuda); Nathan Browne (Bermuda); Mark Hamilton (Trinidad); Brent Barry (Trinidad); Troy Grant (Barbados); Owen Proverbs (Barbados); Kurt Johnson (Jamaica); Ewen Wilson (Jamaica); Geoff Gregory (Jamaica), John Evans (Cayman Islands).