Amor’s outsiders take inspiration from their football counterparts
ENGLAND 7s head coach Simon Amor hopes the feel-good factor created around English football by good friend Gareth Southgate filters through to his side with the Rugby World Cup 7s in San Francisco less than a fortnight away.
Amor, 39, has struck up a close relationship with Southgate through UK Sport’s elite coaching programme, in which the nation’s leading head honchos meet regularly to exchange ideas and adopt best practice in pursuit of trophies.
Amor, below, who names his World Cup squad on Tuesday, told The
Rugby Paper: “It’s been amazing what Gareth’s done. I’ve come across him quite a bit now and he’s a brilliant person who’s very genuine, caring, intelligent and articulate.
“It’s great to see him being successful and those coaching get-togethers we have try to drive learning and take coaching within the UK to the next level.
“Gareth’s taken a keen interest in rugby, meeting Eddie Jones as well. Being able to look at other sports is priceless because it helps you find ways to improve players and better yourself.
“He’ll have taken things from rugby and there’s always stuff that we can take from football and other sports. I don’t know the ins and outs of football but just looking at the way Gareth’s gone about creating a humility within his players is really inspirational and it’s something any head coach, in any sport, wants to emulate.”
England head to San Francisco later this week as outsiders behind big guns South Africa, Fiji and New Zealand, having ended the World Series in fifth place after failing to win an event all year.
However, Amor believe the unique nature of the World Cup, which features straight knock-out rounds rather than the usual Pool format, is conducive to an upset.
England are likely to face Samoa in the last 16, followed by potential quarter-final and semi-final ties against hosts USA and South Africa, with one silver-lining being they cannot meet Fiji or New Zealand until the final two weeks today.
Amor said: “The knockout format is pretty ruthless and it can mean you only get one match in the main competition, but I believe it creates a different feel to the lengthy World Series and that’s what makes this World Cup unique.
“You know roughly who you might meet in advance and if it does turn out to be Samoa, USA and South Africa, they’re teams we know well and have beaten.
“USA love playing on home soil and they’ll have a huge support, but that would be a challenge that excites our players as well.”
Amor believes England are peaking at the right time, adding: “We were never far away in the World Series and although we didn’t win an event, which was disappointing, our performances towards the end were very encouraging.
“Third place at the Commonwealth Games and reaching the final in Paris were good results and we’ve exposed some young talents like Ryan Olowofela and Harry Glover to these tournaments and seen them perform well.
“We’ve got the European 7s in Exeter this weekend and we’ll use that to give our World Series guys some minutes before I name the final World Cup squad on Tuesday. We’ll travel to San Francisco with a lot of optimism.”