THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
The Australian Rugby Sevens women are more than just groundbreaking Olympic champions. Strong, smart and sexy, they are changing the face of women in sport, writes Sophie Tedmanson. Styled by Philippa Moroney. Photographed by Justin Ridler.
Strong, smart and sexy, Australian Rugby Sevens women are changing the face of women in sport.
It is a warm spring morning on Sydney’s North Shore. Two elite sports teams are training on adjacent fields in Narrabeen. On the first, the Australian men’s national Rugby Sevens, all muscle and brawn, go through their routine: tackle and stop, tackle and stop. They look tired and a little out of sorts. The vibe is in stark contrast to the nearby second field where their female counterparts, the Australian women’s national Rugby Sevens squad, are going through the same motions.
The women run, pass, tackle, and smile. They all line up and high five each other. The camaraderie and positive spirit among them is so apparent it is as if they speak in their own shorthand. They are World champions, Olympic champions, and the new icons for women in sport. Where once netball and hockey were the sporting choices of young schoolgirls, now girls are signing up in droves to play rugby, not fearful of the physical danger of the traditionally men’s sport, but wanting to be strong and sporty like the Sevens stars.
The Sevens women live by the motto ROAR: “Respect, Olympic dreams, Accountability and Rough bitches”; and often play Katy Perry's song Roar as their unofficial anthem before games: “I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, Dancing through the fire, 'Cause I am the champion, and you're gonna hear me roar!”
Charlotte Caslick, the team’s undeniable poster girl, who was recently named World Rugby women’s player of the year, jogs over beaming. The scrum-half has blood on her cheek, and for a moment I fear the girls are so tough they spill blood in training. But it is fake, left over from Halloween the previous evening. They are brutally tough on-field, yes, but off-field they are equally warm, girlie (they giggled with delight at being shot by Vogue), intelligent and humble about their success.
“When we were growing up there wasn’t an option of being a professional sportswoman … it wasn’t a reality until a few years ago that we had that chance,” says Caslick. “So obviously it’s awesome, and a dream come true for all of us.”
Fun is one of the key factors head coach Tim Walsh injected into the squad when he crafted the culture they have thrived on and which has been key to their success: a process-driven, performancebased mentality that also allows them to enjoy themselves. Walsh, who coached the seasoned men’s team for four months while also coaching the women to the Rio Olympics, said the differences between
“AS A GROUP WE’VE BEEN ALL ABOUT LEAVING THE SPORT IN A BETTER POSITION”
the two teams is in their emotional approach. “Men need to win to feel good, while the women need to feel good to win and to perform,” Walsh says. “The girls wanted a lot more one-on-one communication and more reassurance, while the boys just wanted to go out and do it. After a team meeting I would ask if there were any questions. The boys would say: ‘Nope, let’s go’, the girls would put up 15 hands,” he says, laughing.
The difference in the locker rooms was marked, too: while the men would be serious and focused, the women’s dressing room prior to their Olympics matches was “like a nightclub”, reveals Walsh. “Our manager was flicking the light on and off, there was music playing. They were focused but relaxed and happy.”
Emilee Cherry, a former Australian touch footballer turned rugby back, says the familial culture has been crucial for the team. “We’ve got this amazing athletic ability, but it’s our work off-field and mentally how strong we are to keep ourselves calm under pressure and really regroup as a team and go out there and express ourselves – that’s why we are so successful,” she says.
With her trademark double braids, Caslick brought glamour to the Rugby Sevens and helped highlight to a wider audience their best assets: being strong, inspiring, powerful women. Walsh recalls a pivotal moment at the Rio Olympics when Caslick did a now famous chase-down tackle during a game against the US: “She had a ruthless competitive edge to run 70 metres across the field, with her plaits bouncing and her ribbons flying behind and fake tan all over her legs … and she drilled this girl into the sideline then bounced to her feet before the other girl took a breath … she looked down at her, flicked her pigtails and walked away like: ‘Right, next job …’
“That was a moment in women’s sport where I thought: ‘That is an Australian women’s Sevens player, ruthless, but completely balanced.”
She may be the Beyoncé of the team but this is by no means a solo show. Caslick is one of a magnificent team of seven and a wider squad of 21 who live, breathe and work together at their Narrabeen base, where they train five days a week. Four years ago, many of them had never even touched a rugby ball. The team was famously formed in 2008 after the International Olympics Committee voted to include Sevens in the Rio 2016 Olympics for the first time.
The Australian Rugby Union began holding talent searches for up-and-coming stars from sports such as rugby league, touch football, basketball, hockey – athletes who could be moulded into the perfect Sevens player: one with strength, speed and flair.
Shannon Parry was teaching geography and physical education to secondary school students and playing 15-a-side rugby when the chance to switch to Sevens “sort of fell at my feet”. Four years later she co-captained the team who made history in Rio.
“They said: ‘Rock up to this location on the fourth of January if you want the chance to go to the Olympics,’” she says smiling at the serendipitous moment that changed her life. “So I dropped everything and took a punt and loved every minute of it.”
A year after they formed the Australians won the inaugural Women’s Sevens World Cup, and continued a stunning trajectory of firsts that culminated in the first-ever Women’s Rugby Sevens gold medal at the Rio Olympics last August.
The magic, Walsh says, was in his recruitment. He looked for emotionally intelligent leaders who could comprehend different plays under pressure but who also had enough self-awareness to maintain their individual personalities in a team of 21 headstrong women. Add to that the international exposure and a long-term plan to transform the sport and be role models to young girls.
“It was about changing the face of women’s rugby and having the responsibility to do it,” states Walsh.
The team took that responsibility and literally ran with it. “The big thing for me is how much our Olympic victory has touched a nation and how many young kids look up to us now,” says Parry. “We’re trying to leave a legacy and a pilot program. As a group we’ve been all about leaving the sport in a better position than when we started.” Former basketballer turned rugby forward Chloe Dalton adds: “Now we’ve had that exposure with people watching, I hope we can continue showcasing women’s rugby and get people into it at a grassroots level.”
Their hope is that the Sydney Sevens tournament this month will generate that further. The event aims to attract a new audience with its spectacle-driven events, in the same vein that Twenty20 cricket with its fireworks and mascots changed the public perception of cricket. (Sevens is a shorter, faster version of traditional rugby, trimming the team of 15-a-side to seven and cutting the 40-minute halves to seven minutes.)
Sponsorship is crucial. The women’s Sevens are paid full-time, but have a long way to go to match the salaries of their male counterparts.
Caslick is matter-of-fact about equality in the sport and the importance of proving to potential sponsors that they are a good financial investment. Like her teammates, she sees herself as a sporting commodity and the team as a product. “We’ve got to start producing money to be paid money,” she says. “The number-one thing is performing when we do get to showcase in front of Australian crowds and everything will just follow.”
She adds that their support has wider implications for women across all codes of sport: “When more professional sporting codes for females are on the market the competition gets higher – like the men have with AFL, rugby league, cricket, soccer – they’ve got so much bargaining power. Whereas we only had Sevens originally, so to have those other sports showing their support of women in sport too will make the market heaps bigger.”
One of the major sponsors of the Women’s Seven is Buildcorp, whose co-founder, principal and chair, Josephine Sukkar, is a passionate advocate for women in sport. Sukkar says there is a magic in the Sevens team that puts them in a league of their own and encourages her to open her company purse. “They are a special team,” she says. “There is one word that I use to describe the team all the time: joyous. There is just something special in that team specifically because it is even more than how it is translated onto the field – it’s also a joy to watch them.”
When the team returned from Rio in September, Walsh decided to take them on a traditional team-bonding excursion to refocus them for the season ahead. “I told them: ‘We’ve come from World Series champions, Olympic gold medalists, everything’s wonderful but we need to get our head out of the clouds and be grounded and train hard and remember everything we did that got us to this point. So to kick the season off I took them skydiving,” he says laughing. ““It was a team challenge and heaps of them were scared but they did it. It’s about challenging yourself and having a blast. I thought it was perfect.”
Girls just want to have fun, indeed – and win.