Mitchell eager to pit wits against Premiership’s finest
FORMER captain Tom Mitchell intends to join the growing number of England players making the switch from World Sevens Series to XVs – but not before he gets the chance to strive for gold at the Tokyo Olympics.
The example of Marcus Watson and Ruaridh McConnochie as Sevens converts at Wasps and Bath has banished misconceptions that Mitchell, 31, believes have long been ingrained in English rugby, where XVs holds a heavy sway over shortened formats.
As Team GB Sevens await funding from the National Lottery to get their Olympic dream back on track, the long-standing England captain has had time to ponder his future after the RFU scrapped the programme last August.
Mitchell, a silver medallist in Rio five years ago, has seen teammates Will Muir and Rich de Carpentier
make the switch to the Premiership – though he may have options overseas.
“It is a never say never scenario for me, it is not like I only ever want to play Sevens. It is my intention to go back to fifteens after Tokyo, so I will see what opportunities will come about,” the Varsity Cup-winning Oxford Blue told TRP.
“You do get a lot of varied responses from clubs towards Sevens players looking to break into fifteens. Especially for me, when you consider my last XVs game was the Varsity Cup match which was a decade ago.
“People are reluctant to envisage that you could transfer your skills over to XVs in a short space of time. That is something you are up against as a Sevens player.
“But that is where this peculiar time can work as a benefit for us, because you have had a number of players go to Premiership clubs and that might swing peoples’ attitudes towards how they shape their recruitment.
“It has been interesting to watch Ben Harris do so well at Saracens. Will Edwards and ‘Chippy’ (De Carpentier) are at Quins, and Will Muir has been hard done by with injury at Bath but I know he will come good. I watch them and I think ‘I do fancy giving it a go’ because the natural competitor in me wants to know what it would be like in a different environment, and to pit my wits against the best of the best in the Premiership.
“It is not going to take these guys a whole year to embed. You can take a month and in that time they’ll be able to call lineouts and handle all the technicals. It is encouraging and hopefully the traditional pigeon-holing of Sevens players is fading.
“My next opportunity might not even be in this country when I come to look at a shift to fifteens, but I have plenty to occupy me between now and the summer.”