Mitchell on road to Rio

ed fifteens players willing to roll up their sleeves and fight for selection in the final 12 at a series of camps and smaller tournaments around Europe.

Nobody really gave them a chance. The really big names from fifteens stayed away – or in one or two cases were warned off by their clubs who didn’t want them involved – and it felt like Great Britain were playing catch up from the start which didn’t necessarily displease Mitchell.

As it happened the Great Britain squad proved rather good at catch up and, digging deep, they battled their way into the final where they finally ran out of steam against an inspired Fiji. No disgrace there, just good memories and a determination to go one better in Tokyo.

But how did Great Britain coach Simon Amor and his skipper Mitchell pull that trick off, getting such a disparate group together so quickly. Wasn’t it difficult?

“I did agonise a bit over it at the start but actually it wasn’t difficult at all,” continues Mitchell. “I wanted it first and foremost to be a rewarding experience, I knew it would be the one shot, potentially, for a lot of us to play in an

“The experience really sets you up for bigger games going forward”

Olympics and I wanted that to be an amazing thing. I also knew we had a lot of talent and I knew that if we got it right we could do very well.

“But at the same time we had some great individuals in that group – the whole group of 27 – that made it easy. There was so much competition, everybody stuck to it, everybody put 100 per cent into it. Which meant that the 12 who actually went to Rio had no choice, they simply had to go out and do as well as they could do and ultimately that proved good enough for a silver medal.

“Before we went there was a lot of talk about which players were going to be involved, maybe some big names. A lot of people said we should have included some more big names but actually I think we got it spot on in terms of that wider training group that was selected. They were the right individuals who were willing to make the sacrifice and commit to the process, they were also players who understood the Sevens process.

“When we scraped through, those little two point victories or games in extra time. You think are they built in the gym, on the track doing your sprint work? Are they even built on the training field? I’m not sure they are. Certainly, in Rio it was built on all the other stuff, forging the bonds between the players and the willingness to fight, fight, fight until the end.”

Just like the Varsity match really.