Why Olympic sevens will blow you away
IN ALL the time I’ve played and coached rugby, we have never witnessed a quantum leap in the sport. We have seen skills, tactics and training methods improve, but not the giant leap forward that can be a game-changer.
But now, over the next six days in Rio, is rugby’s opportunity and I will be surprised if the women and men’s sevens don’t blow you away. As sevens develops, it could unlock skills that rugby has never seen before.
The lure of the Olympics is beginning to attract an incredibly diverse group of athletes to sevens. The women’s favourites and current World Series champions Australia have been put together over the last three years from talent-spotted basketball players, track sprinters, discus throwers, rugby league stalwarts, hockey players and women who had previously played mixed touch rugby.
Touch rugby is very big in Australia, with highly competitive evening leagues in just about every rugby hotspot.
I watched the GB women train — very hard — for nearly two hours on Wednesday and was struck by their athleticism. Heather Fisher, for example, was phenomenal.
Look out for Heather. She ‘suffers’ from alopecia, although suffer is the wrong word because rugby has given her such self-confidence and poise that it doesn’t bother her a jot. She is a great role model for any young women facing the same challenge.
I was also struck by something GB skipper Emily Scarratt said. She is the archetypal sporting allrounder, excelling at track and field and netball at school and turning down a basketball scholarship in the USA to concentrate on rugby. This was her explanation: ‘Rugby played well brings together all the skills and talents of those other sports so that ultimately it is the sport that ticks all the boxes. It’s an amalgamation of everything and sevens emphasises that — you need to bring everything to the party.’
I can only concur. Rugby played well requires a combination of just about every athletic quality known to man, as well as flawless dexterity and hand-eye coordination.
I spent Thursday with the USA men’s squad and there it was again, incredible athleticism and diversity. Carlin Isles is a speedster who can run 10.12sec in the 100metre, a time that would have been good enough to qualify for the semi-finals at London 2012. He also has a 42-inch one-leg standing jump, which would put him in the all-time top 10 in the NBA.
Perry Baker is a sub-21sec 200m man, while Super Bowl-winner Nate Ebner would make a fine decathlete. At the other end of the scale is a small artful dodger, their very talented English-educated playmaker and skipper, Madison Hughes. If there is one sport to sit and watch with your eight-year-old son, daughter, niece or nephew, it should be sevens. It has got something for everybody and it’s a game for every sort of athlete. The other huge leap forward sevens can make is in its perception around the world. The reach of the Olympics is unparalleled. There has been decent progress made in Russia and the USA, but if ever rugby is going to snare those two superpowers, my hunch is that it will be through the Olympics. If ever the most populous nations on earth — China and India — catch the rugby bug it will be through the exposure of sevens here. Take another example, a small but promising rugby nation like Spain. Their teams have battled hard and upset the form book to qualify for Rio.
That is a fine achievement itself, and rugby is generally on the up in the country, but normal media coverage and public awareness of the game there is still very slight.
Spain is a big Olympic nation — the legacy of Barcelona 1992 was very strong for them — and if by any chance either of their sides can cause an upset against one of the big nations and reach the knock-out stages, it will be massive.
Suddenly Spanish rugby will have an audience in every home and bar in a football-mad nation and the profile of the game will rocket. Kenya is another where the exposure of Olympic rugby could give the game a big boost. They too have a decent men’s sevens and if they could cause an upset, it would resonate very loudly in that part of the world.
And lastly, picture the galvanising effect a gold medal could have for Fiji. Setting aside the game of rugby for a moment, thinking about the Pacific Islanders alone, this would be an astonishing achievement. In 12 Olympics to date, Fiji has failed to win a medal or even come close in any event. Now is their chance.
They have always put great raw athletes on the rugby pitch. Now they have the stage to shine.