Sydney Sevens offers us chance to put our style of play into practice
The dust has settled out in the Dubai Desert, and the sun has set on Cape Town, which brings rounds one and two of the Sevens World Series to a close. New Zealand, coached by Clark Laidlaw (cousin of Greig and son of Roy), sit pretty having reached the final of both tournaments. We now find ourselves in Sydney, adjusting to the heat and preparing for a sold-out Allianz Stadium.
While a mixed bag of results, there are a lot of positives to take from our first two tournaments. In Dubai, we reached the quarter-finals, frustratingly losing out to Fiji by a try. It was, however, a promising start for a team with only five of the 13-man squad having been involved in last season’s Twickenham victory.
Darcy Graham was impressive throughout the weekend, moving defenders around, ducking under flailing arms, fighting for every metre. Darcy showed exactly how sevens can benefit a player’s 15-a-side game. In his first rugby since being injured in September, he finished joint top try scorer and was picked in the “dream team” for the tournament. Returning to Scotland the following week, he made his Edinburgh debut, carrying his form from Dubai, scoring in their Challenge Cup victory and has been involved ever since.
In Cape Town, Scott Riddell became Scottish Rugby Sevens’ most capped player, having played in 59 world series tournaments. It would be hard to find a more hardworking and devoted sevens player in any country’s team. Scott is a great leader and commands the utmost respect from his teammates.
In a sevens weekend, the difference between the teams who make it to the top of the pile and those who don’t is fine. If Dubai showed our new players how quickly you can find yourself challenging for the cup, Cape Town affirmed the opposite.
Losing out by an unconverted try to both Argentina and England in the group stages fated us to the bowl competition, while Argentina went on to make the cup final and England had another strong weekend. Meanwhile, we accumulated injury after injury and finished poorly. A slight difference in the 14 minutes of mayhem in either of our day one games, and it would have been an entirely different weekend.
For the next two tournaments we welcome Glen Bryce and Sean Kennedy of Edinburgh Rugby and Alec Coombes of London Scottish into the team. Glen and Sean bring a wealth of previous sevens experience, Glen with two series gold medals, a silver and a bronze to his name. Alec has impressed in training as a strong and evasive runner.
In our pool this weekend we face Canada, the United States and our hosts, Australia, all preferring differing styles of play.
In Canada, we will face a direct team, who will look to make yards up the middle of the pitch, sucking defenders in before attacking wide.
The United States will prefer the widths of the pitch, looking to Danny Barrett as a battering ram down one wing to draw in defenders, the aim being to give speedster Perry Baker as much space as possible on the opposite width.
Australia will happily allow us the ball while they set their defence, using organised line-speed to pressure us, looking for errors and turnovers. Playing quickly from these turnovers means attacking us when we are at our most vulnerable, as we transition from attack to defence.
Each style of play naturally comes with strengths and weaknesses, and key to our success this weekend will be anticipating where we will be put under pressure, but also knowing where we can apply our own pressure. Training over the Christmas period has been used to specifically focus on these areas, in the moments we have not been being run up and down the pitch by our conditioning coach.
With a tough block of Christmas training under our belts, and our fresh faces from Dubai not so fresh any more, the following weekends in Sydney and Hamilton offer an opportunity to put our own style of play into practice and build momentum towards April, and the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.