But in terms of its role in development, often we hear about this notion of “use the game for development”. The truth in South Africa is that it’s a token quote only, and those players who have come through have been be accident rather than design. They choose to play Sevens (Aplon and Ebersohn), or they are allowed to play a few tournaments because their unions have no need for them for a short time.

What Australia have done is to integrate Sevens into the pathway. This is as much out of necessity as anything else – they don’t have as many opportunities to test and blood young players as others countries do. I suspect that if you analyze the average age of Super 14 teams, you would confirm this. Or at least, they have far more players under 22 playing Super14.

Their Sevens strategy then, is the first in the world that recognizes the potential of the game (commercially and for development) and they’re going to produce some outrageously good players in the next 2 years. Yes, they need a separate strategy for the front row and locks, but they’ll have that too.

It worries me a great deal, as someone involved in SA Sevens, that they, plus the USA, are looking with such focus at Sevens, because I guarantee that in five years time, they will be untouchable, unless we respond. That’s in Sevens.

With regards to 15s, we may produce a lot of players, but that kind of approach is the same “myopic” approach that got the USA steel industry into trouble in the early 20th century. Famous paper called “marketing myopia”. Strategically, if you fail to appreciate that volume of talent is not a sustainable resource, you lose.

And finally, I think the Aussies are not purely doing it for development. They want to win the Olympic Gold medal, and so to them, the status of Sevens is significantly higher than it was a year ago, and it will continue to rise.

I know that many rugby followers don’t have much time for Sevens. They see it as “half-baked” and gimmicky. And yes, I’m biased here, but the reason you may feel that is because the traditional unions have “told” you to feel that through their complete disregard for the game as a valuable commercial entity.

Sevens will become what T20 is to cricket. And you may be surprised to learn that 61% of all rugby-playing nations believe that within 10 years, Sevens will be bigger than 15s. This came out of a survey done by the IRB, and which was presented at a meeting I attended in London this past week. So out of 110 rugby playing nations, about 70 see Sevens. The 40 that don’t, sadly, including the big unions of SA, NZ, Aus, Eng, Scotland, Ireland, Wales. In other words, traditional.

Imagine India sitting stagnant on T20 cricket. If the old “farts in ties” had their way, the IPL would never have happened and we’d all be sipping tea clapping politely as players in white flannels scored 2 runs an over during a day of Test cricket. Sport is entertainment, it must respond or audiences will continue to fall (25% down in Super 14 in New Zealand this year, for example). Sevens holds the key to turning that around.

Ross

You can add Ryan Kankowski’s name to that list.

If you are big and fast but cannot pass, or fast with good playmaker skills but cannot tackle, you will get found out very quickly.

I think his aim is to get all young players involved in Sevens development, so they hit Super Rugby around age 21, with plenty of years left to hone their setpiece skills after having already developed strong fundamentals.

There are already some SA success stories too in Ebersohn, and De Jongh and Aplon too I believe, now just to do the same with some big young loosies. Koster would be a good example.

Plus long term, imagine a bunch of young Schalk types with the ball skills of a George Smith. Scary stuff indeed.

I assumed it would result in a lot of pain for the 7′s team for the good of the Wallabies, but it looks as if the extra focus on skills and development in the team (even if it is purely for longterm Wallaby development) is already paying dividends.

That said, they still have a long way to go to achieve the consistent performances of say Fiji or NZ, who have permanent specialist 7′s players, or the Blitzboks when they are able to field their top team.

Juries is a freak,dude is in his late 20′s I think but he is still as rapid as ever,his acceleration/feet are only bettered by a fit/insipired Ryder.

Was great to see Faba bk..

So the team talk thing is because you have to understand that you have 2 minutes to get a message across, and the key was to give the players a sense of belief that they had the game in their hand if they could minimize mistakes. Many of those errors stemmed from lack of composure and belief in the plan. So the issue was execution of the game-plan, not the actual “need to do to improve”. We already knew what to do, it was a question of doing it. And while it may sound easy, that is never a question of quickly saying “Do A, B and C”. So the approach in that particular team-talk was to emphasize our senior player-experience and the fact that we could, if we executed properly, have been up at half-time. You say what you believe will work in those 2 minutes, and providing excessive information is unlikely to work.

Just on the Australians, since the beginning of the season, they have been improving game after game, and I can’t stress enough how high a quality they are. Their performances against England and Scotland on Day 1 were among the best I’ve ever seen in Sevens. They are all pedigreed players, hand-picked by Robbie Deans out of the Australian Academy system to play 7s with a view towards integrating them into 15s in two to three years. So more than any other country (NZ never gets 7s players into 15s anymore, SA got Aplon and de Jongh in just this weekend, but this is not by design as much as it is player choice and skill), Australia will soon see a host of these young guys playing Super 15 very soon.

This strategic alignment between 7s and 15s is unique, since no other country has it (we must fight for players in SA, for example, and play a distant second to Union commitments, as do England and NZ), and the Australians will become the most dominant side in rugby unless that changes. Particularly with the Olympic inclusion, 7s in Aus will now also benefit from the integration into the Australian Olympic system, which is really the benchmark for high performance sport around the world (the Chinese and British systems are copies of it), and so all in all, Australian rugby is looming ominously because of its strategic foresight (ironically, influenced heavily by robbie Deans).

Anyway, a disappointing result for us (SA) in that final, because too many errors cost us, but it’s a bit extreme for “The Boks are Back” to call it a “pitiful display” and to say that Aus “ran circles around us”. Look at the match objectively, we had equal possession, equal tackle stats, equal time in 22m, same passes, just more clinical finishing by them, whereas we lacked composure on the final press (as witnessed by 2 kicks with a man over). No one wishes to lose, of course, but the match was very closely contested, but the form team of the weekend won. Just.

Anyway, my two cents’ worth from London.

Ross

True, necromancing Sevens coaches are thin on the ground in SA.

Quite embarrassing really after the previous great performances. Seeing that must have really got Samoan blood boiling.

Well done to Aus – they were focussed and determined, and ran circles around SA, and certainly deserved the win.

Listening to Paul Treu’s half time pep-talk was interesting. Sorry to say but that guy would not inspire my deceased grandmother to bake a cake … and she loved baking cakes! Maybe instead of giving a lame speech about Aussies not belonging there (which they certainly did) … perhaps give some advice on what to improve.

Sad result to great weekend.

These Samoan’s are starting to piss me off….

8)