‘This is bigger than Olympic medals, it is about the future of sevens in Britain’
Charlie Hayter is heading up Team GB’S revived programme for Tokyo and is determined to bolster the short-form game
Charlie Hayter has a habit of missing out on important moments during his rugby sevens career. As a player he was the travelling reserve in the Great Britain squad when they won silver at the Rio Olympics. Then, as an assistant to coach with England women when they qualified on behalf of Team GB for the Tokyo Olympics, he could not be present in Kazan due to the birth of his daughter Evelyn.
The 32-year-old jokes that this time around as team leader for GB Sevens he can pick himself. However, it would seem these setbacks have given him a resilience that will help when it comes to heading up a programme that was set up from scratch after the Rugby Football Union, Welsh Rugby Union and Scottish Rugby Union secured National Lottery funding.
The RFU had scrapped its sevens programmes in August and Hayter is candid when he explains that the job ahead is about more than just the Olympic Games – it is about the future of British rugby sevens.
“There is a bigger picture than a medal. This is about sevens in Great Britain and whichever way that goes we have an opportunity to put sevens at the forefront of people’s minds,” he says.
“The onus is on us as players and management. There is a big responsibility for us towards the sport and the programme. The way we are as a programme in the GB sense and the way we are as individuals and a team, we have to put this in the best place it can be for the next generation of sevens players towards the Commonwealth Games and on to Paris in 2024.”
Hayter is joined by Tony Roques, the former England defence coach who had a spell with America, with Scotland’s Scott Forrest the women’s head coach. They have branded the Olympic campaign “Mission Possible” despite now having only just over four and a half months together to train in person.
The first day of face-to-face training begins for the men today at Loughborough and will no doubt bring back a deluge of memories for Hayter. If all had gone to plan, he could well have been part of this squad. But having come tantalisingly close to the silver medal winning men’s side in 2016, the former Wasps centre has focused on building up coaching and managerial experience, having taken on the role of England women’s head coach in 2019 from James Bailey.
A total of 19 women and 21 men have initially been selected, with squads to be whittled down to 12 plus a reserve for Tokyo. The pain of selection is one Hayter will understand better than most, having initially been left out of the squad for Rio only to be called up when Alex Davis was injured.
He says: “I was gutted. Although you got to experience it, it was amazing, but you missed out – in terms of, you can smell it and taste it but you are not quite getting that same Olympic experience.”
When Hayter returned from Brazil, his aim was to continue playing and although he took on a playercoach role with England in 2018, Tokyo was his ambition until he severely damaged his anterior cruciate ligament. But he believes he actually overachieved in his career and having had setbacks he brings a different point of view.
“I have had multiple operations and non-selections. It gives a different perspective now to be that person who is not top of the tree and has experienced setbacks and frustration. I can see this with players now and it givens me a sympathy and empathy towards what players will go through in the next part of the journey,” he says.
“Most people probably set out to play for England, I had that dream, but I wanted to play in the Premiership first. Having the opportunity to experience the Commonwealth Games and put on the England shirt and to be involved with GB and Rio, it was a lot more than I thought I could have achieved.”
Perhaps then it will be in his management career that Hayter will earn acclaim. Due to his experience with England women he has passionately advocated equal pay for men and women, which, as Telegraph Sport revealed last month, has been introduced for the first time in a British rugby programme.
“Seeing first hand the amount of work that goes into being a sevens player then the certain challenges women have in terms of funding,” he responds when asked why he fought for equality in pay.
Hayter does not shy away from the uphill battle ahead. “We know the challenges here but there are some real opportunities to do something special and it is possible. People do things against the odds, it happens, it is not an impossible thing we are trying to do,” he says.
“It is like we have started a marathon at the pace of Usain Bolt for the first mile and we are going to soon find out whether we can carry that on or not, but I am pretty confident that we can.”
Parallels in cricket are seldom so close as this one involving two young English off-spinners thrown into the deepest of deep ends in India. Dom Bess, 23, is struggling to rebuild his confidence for the fourth Test starting in Ahmedabad on Thursday so he can resume the role he lost after the first Test against India in Chennai. He took four wickets in their first innings, before the Indian batsmen got on top of him.
Exactly the same thing happened 20 years ago to young English offspinner Richard Dawson. On the tour of India in late 2001 he took four wickets in the first innings of his Test debut – before India’s batsmen got on top of him.
As a nice feature of this interview, it was not done by Zoom or phone. Yesterday morning on the Bristol Downs was the perfect time and place to walk – at a social distance – and talk with the 40-year-old who is Gloucestershire’s head coach and a spin-bowling consultant England use regularly.
Like most of the best coaches, Dawson has been there and done that for a bit (seven Tests) before departing the international scene and reflecting on what could have been better. In his case, he says he should not have got involved in a battle with the batsman so much, focusing instead more on the processes of his own bowling – as Jack Leach is doing now and “bowling beautifully”.
So as we walked across the Downs to where Gloucestershire played their first match, against Surrey in 1870, Dawson readily sympathised with Bess’s position in Ahmedabad. In his debut Test, at Mohali, Dawson bowled 43 overs and took four wickets for 134, an amazing effort for a rookie considering that India included Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman – four of the finest batsmen against spin of all time, as they proceeded to show at the next opportunity.
“First and foremost, you’re trying to spin a few plates,” Dawson said. “One is that you’re trying to take hold of a position in the team. You want to be proving you’re good enough to do that on a consistent basis – which you’re always trying to do whatever team you’re in, but you’re doing it in some of the toughest conditions against some of the best players who know those conditions very well. So you’re dribbling a few things at once, which is quite a tough proposition.
“I found that when you lose confidence in that environment you’ve got to find a passage in that game to start building your confidence back up again – a slow part of the game. Can you bank up some maidens and get back into it? And that’s tough, just trying to find that period in a game, especially if it is moving forward quickly.” Safe to say the two-day third Test in Ahmedabad had no slow part.
“You almost need a dead session, or when the ebb and flow slows down. Realistically as well, the expectations from people at home and elsewhere are that you’re a spinner and you’re going to the subcontinent and it’s your job to put your team in a position to win games. So you’ve got to juggle all these things – and that’s not even taking into account that you’re only starting your Test career and played a few seasons, and in the last year we’ve not had a great deal of cricket. There’s quite a big picture there. “In Mohali I felt they [India’s batsmen] were sizing me up, and then I remember the second Test match [in Ahmedabad’s old stadium] when they came out and put me under pressure from the off, seeing if I could hold my game together and I probably didn’t – well, I didn’t do that – in the first innings. They put me straight on to the back foot. I remember Tendulkar really used his feet, put my length under pressure and hit me for six over the top with a hockey shot. “Then as soon as your field is spread, they are such good players at taking the ones and rotating the strike. They have the power game but they also have the ability to manipulate the field. In England you normally bowl at a player who either takes you on for the boundaries or sits in his crease – very rarely do you find a batsman who can do both.
“So you are always changing your fields and always trying to find a method to stay in the game. I remember being mentally exhausted in that second Test after thinking about how to compete. In the second innings the game was dry [India were blocking out the final day for a draw] and it allowed me to get some overs in and some confidence back, but very, very rarely do you get that in that environment. This is the hard part, you’re not allowed to bowl, or reflect on what you’re trying to do, it’s non-stop in a Test in India.” What has Bess to do now? “You’ve got to reflect on the positive times and what it felt like. Don’t overanalyse. We tend to over-analyse and look for answers. If you keep on digging deep, you’ll always find something if you want to, and that’s without listening to the media and other people. “Sometimes you just have a bad day and accept it. I tell players, ‘It’s not perfection you’re looking for, it’s progression’.”