Aussie sevens have the right Friend as coach

You could feel the buzz at the Sydney Football Stadium 30 minutes before play started on the first day of the Sydney Sevens.

Massive crowds, dressed in a kaleidoscope of colours and outfits, gathered around the entrance areas waiting to get into the ground.

Among this crowd were large numbers of Fijian supporters in their white jerseys. And this sea of white was flecked with the other traditional rugby colours of gold, green, red, blue (dark and light) and black, signifying the inevitable and raucous support for the All Blacks Sevens.

I saw a woman of a certain age wearing a pristine Roosters jersey. So this was a broad church sporting crowd. There were Supermen, Superwomen, air hostesses in khaki, Elvis impersonators, men in beards wearing women’s clothing, groups of chanting Wallabies supporters and even Popeye the Sailor Man, with his pipe dangling in jaunty fashion from his mouth.

Right from the outset, it was clear that the Sydney Sevens was going to emulate the party time spirit created over the decades by the Hong Kong Sevens.

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And this mood intensified as the tournament gathered momentum as game after game was played and won. By the time the final between the Australian Thunderbolts and the All Black Sevens arrived, the 45th match of the tournament, the huge crowd was a seething, singing mass of support for the home team.

Earlier, though, when the USA scored a spectacular try against Wales, the cameras caught a couple, the man dressed as Uncle Sam, celebrating with a vigorous kissing session.

Instantly around the SFS other couples indulged themselves in trying to out-kiss the Yanks. You had the sense that some sort of kissing tradition, a bit like booing the Australians at Hong Kong, was in the making.

To complicate matters in this regard slightly, the ground speakers were belting out the Wales signature song Why Oh Why Delilah? with the native-son Tom Jones doing the honours.

I say to complicate matters because I wonder what the kissers would make of their activity if they really understood the words to the song!

Anyway, those were pleasures awaiting me and the other 36,217 spectators throughout the tournament as we made our way to our seats.

While I was taking in all the colour, excitement, expectation and rumbling music creating the early and lasting atmosphere, a couple of pleasant young South Africans in their Springbok jerseys came up to me.

“Are you the chap who writes about rugby?” one of them asked.

I pleaded guilty.

“What about the referee at Wellington?” they asked.

I replied that the problem for the Springbok Sevens was less about the referee and more about their size, or to be more precise, their lack of size.

“They’re just too small,” I insisted. “When it is ten minutes each half, this lack of size begins to tell towards the end of the match. That was, for me, the real issue for the Springbok Sevens at Wellington.”

We shook hands and went on our way to enjoy the two splendid days of brave, spectacular and entrancing rugby played in the true spirit of real sport. The climax of the tournament, the final between the Thunderbolts and the All Black Sevens was about the most exciting 20 minutes of sport you could hope to experience, any where and any time.

***

When you watch Rugby Sevens live you get a real sense about the size and power of the players. This observation came to me as I watched the opening match of the Sydney Sevens, Fiji versus Samoa, a match which perhaps explains the preponderance of Fijian and Samoan supporters in the early crowd numbers.

Admittedly, wearing white (as fashion conscious people insist) makes a person look to be bigger than they probably are. But the Fijians looked and clearly were enormous. Some of them appeared to be twice the size of their Samoan opponents.

The major weakness in the Fijian game, though, was their general lack of passing skills. They tend to do basketball-type passes and rely more on the sheer power and pace of their big players running through, over and sometimes around their opponents.

Typical of the Fiji player is Savenaca Rawaca. He has dazzling speed, outrageous foot work, soft hands and the sort of bulk that makes tackling him akin to tackling a runaway tank. As well as all these attributes, Rawaca is a top off-loader on the sevens circuit.

Some player! And from a village that produced Rupeni Caucaunibuca, William Ryder (a stupendous sevens star) and Seru Rabeni.

The Springbok Sevens team in action provided an entirely difference experience. They are smaller, incredibly quick and have more variety in their play. They kick a lot, for instance, for the open spaces and trust the blinding speed of Seabelo Senatla to out-speed the defenders to the ball.

The Daily Telegraph noted that Senatla is a “puny” 76 kilograms and that three of his teammates, Rosco Speckman, another flier, Cheslin Kolbe and Justin Geduld are even lighter!

I was wondering while watching them race through to the semi-finals, with a splendid victory over Argentina in the quarter-finals, how these smaller players would handle their bigger, chunkier Australian opponents. With difficulty is the answer to that question.

***

During the Australia versus Portugal match, the home side’s opening fixture, I concentrated on watching James Stannard and how he went about organising the attacks for his side.

He started with a bad pass. Then he gave away a penalty. A monster pass set up an important try for the Australian Sevens. Later he converted a try from a wide angle.

This conversion indicated a strongish point in his game, an important consideration given the generally pathetic conversion attempts made by other teams.

The short dead ball area, a feature of the Sevens Rugby field markings, meant that players found it difficult to run around to score under the posts from a wide angle.

So the ability to kick conversions, which Stannard did in the final, too, is a valuable asset for his side.

Towards the end of the match against Portugal, Stannard made a saving-try tackle and won the turnover and a penalty. Finally, he missed a tackle badly which resulted in Portugal scoring a try.

I gave Stannard a six out of ten, possibly a five given the lack of quality in the Portugal squad, for this effort.

But later against the All Black Sevens, in the last match of the first day, Stannard seemed to take the ball more to the line, as a playmaker should.

But he was totally outperformed by Lewis Holland, who played a blinder, especially in the first half, as he carved up the New Zealanders. Holland, in fact, was the standout player for the Thunderbolts throughout the tournament.

It seems to me that if Quade Cooper is to be selected for the Thunderbolts that it is Stannard’s position of halfback, rather than as a playmaker, that he should be contesting.

This would have Cooper sweeping in defence and being a passer, something he is good at, very good at in fact, on attack. His drop-kicking, too, is adept enough for him to be a reliable source of points, probably more so than Stannard.

Given this, I think it was a mistake on the part of coach Andy Friend not to put Cooper on the bench and bring him on, as Sonny Bill Williams was in Wellington, for the last minute or so of the occasional game.

***

Before the Thunderbolts played the All Black Sevens in the last match of the first day, new Australian Sevens coach Andy Friend told a television interviewer that he had a new gameplan to beat the All Black Sevens.

What was that plan?

Tom Kingston took the field as a starter, his first minutes on the field in the first day. Stannard was more direct, initially, in taking the ball to the line. Lewis Holland was often first receiver and tended to direct the play to the blindside.

With the All Black Sevens giving away penalties, the Australian Sevens built up a 17-5 lead at half-time. But were swamped in the second half as the New Zealanders stormed to a try under the posts after time to force a draw.

It was noticeable that the All Blacks’ Dylan Collier was targeted with the kick-offs, which he regularly dropped. Was targeting him part of the secret plan?

The draw was only the second stalemate between the Australian (eight wins) and New Zealand Sevens (53 wins) sides. The result, then, despite the disappointing second half outcome, was a significant outcome for Friend and the team he is trying to turn into a medal winner at the Rio Olympics.

There was a bizarre incident at the end of the match when the All Black Sevens clearly had eight players on the field. World Rugby had no explanation at the start of the second day about how that happened.

Even if it was an official mistake (which we don’t know yet), the New Zealanders had a clear responsibility to have only seven players on the field.

Why they weren’t deducted their points for a draw is beyond me.

Anyway, the conventional wisdom among the experts at the tournament was that the Australian Sevens were better served to have kept their quarter-final match against England, as this side had only ten fit players left to play out the finals.

As it happened, the Australian Sevens were incredibly lucky to scrape out a win against the beleagured England side in extra time. England had a penalty near the Australian posts. All they had to do was set up an easy drop goal.

This, if successful, would have won the match for England. Instead they tried to smash over for a try, attempting to get some last power out of their tired legs.

The well-organised Australian defence (take a bow Cameron Clark) held England out. Holland and the youngster Henry Hutchinson (19 this week) combined for the winning try, with Hutchinson looking and playing very much like the young James O’Connor when he first dazzled the rugby world at the Hong Kong Sevens all those years ago.

To my mind, Hutchinson, Holland and Clark are a quick, incisive trio of players who provide the Thunderbolts with class on attack and defence that needs to be backed up with bigger and more rugged players in the forwards. A distributor like, say, Cooper, would also provide the direction for the team’s attacks.

As an aside, Clark has hinted that he is finishing his sevens career after the Rio Olympics. One of the Super Rugby franchises, the NSW Waratahs possibly, should snap him up. He has enough pace to run around opposition wingers. His defence is excellent.

Clark is a smart player, in the mould of Conrad Smith, a player he resembles a lot in the way he goes about his work dominating the edges of the field.

***

The other standout for the Australian Sevens side was Friend.

He made a big call not to play Cooper in the tournament. Although I disagree with this call I can see the merits in it. Cooper was saved being spoiled, a fate that caught up with Speight.

The Thunderbolts played in different ways against the South African Blitzboks and All Black Sevens. Against the Blitzboks they played a field position game forcing the South Africans to try and play their way out from deep inside their own territory.

The Thunderbolts also bullied the smaller Blitzboks in the rucks.

Against the bigger and stronger All Black Sevens, the Thunderbolts played wide and used the pace of Cameron Clark, Hutchinson and Greg Jeloudev to score crucial long-range tries.

The Thunderbolts were within one lost ruck from sealing a famous victory against the All Black Sevens, a side like their more famous XVs counterpart that has an uncanny knack of pulling off last-minute, last-second sometimes, tries to snatch victory from their opponents.

No one and nothing is perfect. But the play of the Thunderbolts, together with the coaching of Friend suggests that the drought of a World Rugby Sevens finals win is imminent.

And the vibes for the two days of the inaugural Sydney Sevens suggests, too, that Australia has a sevens tournament to rival the famed Hong Kong Sevens for colour, fun, enjoyment and great rugby.