SPIRO: Aussie women's sevens set to run Rio-t at 2016 Olympics

The rugby sevens game is exploding around the world on the strength of its inclusion as a full sport at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

A report prepared for World Rugby by the sport’s main sponsor HSBC (along with DHL) notes that the number of women players has grown in the last three years from 200,000 to 1.7 million.

Nearly a third of these players are girls, a massive portent for the future growth of rugby around the world.

» Olympic rugby sevens – men’s schedule
» Olympic rugby sevens – women’s schedule

The second-quickest growing sport for women in the USA, after football, is rugby. The rugby game is moving into the schools and colleges as an essential part of the athletic programme.

It has become essential because rugby sevens is now an Olympic sport. The kerchunk! kerchunk! principle applies with Olympic sports. Once a sport is given the Olympic five-ringed status, it becomes eligible for Olympic funding that tends to be lavish if there is the possibility of winning medals.

The Rio Games will be the fifth time rugby has been a part of the Olympics. On the other four times, as Paul Rees has pointed out in The Guardian, “The 15-a-side format was used and, if it proved successful with the crowds – the 6,000 attendance at the 1900 Olympics in Paris was the largest gate at the Games – very few countries fielded teams.”

Rees notes that sevens rugby has provided the answer to the lack of teams willing to take part: “The International Rugby Board saw, after the dawn of the professional era, the Olympics as a means of helping finance emerging nations who would become eligible for government support.”

This growth, allied with the stunning success of the USA men’s sevens side at London last year and at Dubai over the weekend, where they defeated the All Blacks twice, ensures sevens rugby is getting traction in the most lucrative commercial market in the world – the USA.

The HSBC report notes that rugby sevens has opened up the game to international tournaments on every continent in the world: the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, Pan-American Games – and the big one – the Olympics and the Youth Olympics.

World Rugby put out a media release before the Dubai Sevens, the first tournament of 10 in the 2015-16 sevens series, that live output of the tournament includes 5,884 hours of airtime to an estimated 400 million homes in 144 nations in 12 different languages.

Sevens rugby, with its mass appeal, is becoming a worldwide equivalent of cricket’s Big Bash League in Australia.

It is certain that within a decade, if not sooner, on the back of the Rio Olympics, that the men’s and women’s sevens rugby tournament schedule will become one of the leading international sporting events on the world stage.

I need to point out here that there is no way rugby league can hijack this growth of rugby sevens by becoming involved in major tournaments with their nines competition, or league players being selected in rugby sevens sides, as some writers on The Roar have suggested.

The reason why this league involvement can’t and won’t take place is related to the parochialism of the league game and its lack of structures for women to play in international competitions.

At the Dubai Sevens over the weekend we saw a Russian women’s side defeat the virtually unbeatable New Zealand women’s side and make it through to the final before going down 31-12 to a terrific Australian side.

The final placings at the Dubai Sevens in the Women’s World Series give an indication of the spread of the game: Australia (22 points), Russia (19 points), England (17 points), France (15 points), New Zealand (13 points), Canada (12 points). Other teams in the tournament included Fiji, Japan and Spain.

This is a spread of rugby as a sport for women that league cannot match, even in the men’s game.

What the league tragics have to understand is for a sport to flourish worldwide and be eligible for representation in international tournaments it has to have a men’s and women’s component.

World Rugby and many national unions (especially the ARU, SARU and New Zealand Rugby Union) have invested millions of dollars into women’s sevens. And in doing this, they have created a franchise with sevens rugby which is going to be massive in terms of encouraging players into the game and, as part of a virtuous circle, with incredibly diverse marketing opportunities.

The ARU put out a media release on Sunday (justifiably) headed: “Australia’s Golden Girls Claim Dubai Crown In Style”.

The opening paragraph made the critical point: “The Qantas Australian Women’s Sevens team has laid down a huge marker with the Rio 2016 Olympics on the horizon by winning the Dubai Sevens title in stunning fashion.”

The Australians were undefeated in the tournament with wins over Spain (29-7), Japan (47-0), England (24-7) New Zealand (15-12), France (26-0), and Russia in the final (31-12).

I was among a handful of spectators who saw the Australian national women’s side play their New Zealand counterparts at North Sydney Oval decades ago. The women on both sides played with splendidly correct techniques but without power.

Now there is an athleticism, power, speed and technique in their play that makes for a tremendous spectacle.

The turning point in the final came when Ellia Green, a powerhouse runner, scored a breakaway, long-range try that turned the game in favour of Australia. She looked for all the world like a female version of Henry Speight as she powered down the sideline and out-ran the cover defence that could not foot it with her.

The men’s sevens finished in sixth place, losing narrowly to Fiji and New Zealand, the two powerhouse teams that finished first and second in last year’s World Series.

There were several standout players for the team: Henry Speight (playing in jersey number one), who was strong and effective on the wing, Sam Myers, a rangy player from the bush who played with spirit and energy, and Ed Jenkins, the captain of the side and a potential try-scorer whenever he got the ball.

Overall, the Australians lack the sort of dazzling speed that, say, the USA had with Perry Baker, or the all-round speed, sevens nous and fluid athleticism of Fiji who often looked a class above all their opponents.

Fiji have never won a medal of any colour at the Olympics. You would have to believe with the sevens talent they have and the inspirational coaching from Ben Ryan that they are odds-on for a medal, including the strong possibility of it being gold, at Rio.

Fiji have now beaten New Zealand six times in a row. Ryan might have been tempting fortune a bit when he told reporters that Fiji have the wood on New Zealand right now.

A nice touch at the tournament was the appointment of Jessica Beard as the efficient and unobtrusive referee of the women’s final between Australia and Russia.

And for those of us who worried about Craig Joubert after his disgraceful treatment by World Rugby at the 2015 World Cup, don’t worry anymore. He refereed at the tournament, in his usual sympathetic (to the players) and accurate manner.

He clearly enjoyed himself.

I noticed that during his refereeing of the Scotland-Russia match he gave a short-arm penalty from a Russian scrum feed that enabled Scotland to get possession, with time up, and score the winning try.

Joubert also refereed England’s 21-5 win over Australia in the pool stages. Without making anything of it (rightly so because the decisions were right), Australia were penalised four times to England’s one in this match.

The Australian sports media makes a lot of noise about the Matildas as a premier Australian women’s sports team. There now needs to be even more enthusiasm for the Australian women’s rugby sevens side.

They won a World Cup for sevens rugby some years ago, and are now on course to be among the medals, with gold a possibility, at the Rio Olympics.

The ARU can help here, too. Open up a competition, with special tickets for the Sydney Sevens in February next year as the prize, for a new nickname for the women’s and men’s sevens rugby teams.

My suggestion: the Wallaroos for the women’s sevens side. And the Wallaby Sevens for the men, along the lines of the All Blacks Sevens.

A final point. The atmosphere at Dubai was vibrant and colourful with large crowds enjoying themselves and the rugby, in the manner of the Hong Kong Sevens.

It is clear that Dubai is going to become an iconic sevens rugby venue.

Unfortunately, the experiment of holding the Australian Sevens at the Gold Coast has been a failure. The tournament now is in its right place at Allianz Stadium in Sydney.

It is now up to the marketing talents of the ARU to create a Sydney World Sevens rugby tournament that is the equal of Hong Kong. If Dubai can do it, why not Sydney?