Olympics: USA boss Mike Friday hits out at ‘costly’ Rugby Sevens remarks ahead of ‘fierce and brutal’ medal charge
USA boss previews the Olympic Rugby Sevens.
USA Rugby Sevens head coach Mike Friday speaks exclusively to Planet Rugby to preview the 2024 Paris Olympics with rugby taking centre stage at the Stade de France.
Friday has joined our team to give you daily updates on the tournament as the former Wasps’ scrum-half highlights the trends to keep an eye on and hits out at comments made by World Rugby’s John Jeffrey.
A former international sevens star himself, Friday is one of the most respected specialist short-form coaches in the world and we look forward to sharing his thoughts with you over the next few days.
James While joined Friday to look at the key themes that are likely to emerge over the hotly anticipated tournament.
Crossroads
“For me, the key strategic takeout of this tournament is how important it is for the shop window of Sevens around the world,” Friday enthused.
“World Rugby have perhaps treated the Sevens circuit as an event-based proposition up until now, but to have this showcase in front of a sold-out crowd at one of the key stadiums in the world is almost unheard of opportunity to grow this format of the game to a global audience.
“I have to say I was a little nonplussed with the comments of World Rugby’s John Jeffrey in the Telegraph today and to be honest, they don’t sit well with me.
“The opportunity our format has is huge; XVs is dominated by the set-piece and the technical aspects, things that are hard to learn without a deep rugby culture; Sevens has that jumpers for goalposts feel, is much easier to understand for the layperson and also, crucially in the modern era, has less collision based moments and is therefore a little bit safer.
“World Rugby need to see Sevens not as a cost, but as a project of investment which, handled correctly, can give a huge long-term return on investment,” Friday argued.
“If we crack the USA market in terms of eyeballs for this tournament, then the skies the limit. USA interest will spark Chinese interest and so on – it becomes a snowballing effect and has the potential to gain great momentum and for me, that’s the key thing I’d like to see as a takeout from this coming week.”
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Aerialists and scrapers
Whilst most consider the Sevens format to be a sport of intuition and open running, Friday is quick to point out that the modern teams pay great attention to their set-piece, defence and aerial game detail. With the laws rewarding try-scoring teams with retaining the restart and kicking off, that aerial battle from the kickoff is now one of the key foci of Sevens tactics and Friday believes that it’s the best organised sides that are the ones who succeed consistently.
“The relationship between the kicker and the catcher – who we call aerialists – is absolutely key and we can see some great exponents of this in the teams. It’s about accuracy and variety with the boot and the ability for a solo chasing aerialist to leap and catch the ball whilst being challenged by a receiving lifting pod,” Friday explained.
“If you have more than one aerialist to offer variety and change up the point of catch from the kickoff then you are able to really move that receiving pod around and to cause them a lot of problems in how they organise themselves defensively. Above all, Sevens is a possession-based sport – sometimes XVs is exactly the opposite and one that can be won from defence and transition, which is rarely the case in Sevens.
“The role of those kickers and aerialists cannot be overstated; they are the key to retaining possession and to maintain attacking pressure with recovered ball from the kickoff and if you get this side of the game right, it’s very hard for teams to come back at you when they’re starved of the ball.
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“We also work hard to control ‘the second touch’ as it’s known – you might call it the ‘drop zone’ in XVs. The dream aerialist rises and catches clean, but some sides, notably Fiji, will prefer to slap back, and they try to execute this back as a ‘second touch’ to the kicker who is following his own kick in support. But I prefer the clean catch – it’s the best possession in our game and most sides, including us, now aspire to that model as teams will train to counter the slap by trying to win that second touch contest, whereas they can’t do that with the clean catch.
“If you want to watch the best exponents of these arts, France’s Jordan Sepho, a 6’5” athlete of incredible ability is the king of aerialism. His speed to leap and his height of jump are quite phenomenal, he claims the clean catch more often than not and he’ll be a key player for France.
On the flip side, the kicker I’d urge you to watch is Argentina’s Joaquin Pellandini, a left-footed specialist who is pinpoint in his accuracy and able to ask different questions due to his angles,” admired the USA Head Coach.
“Defence has changed over the years; a few of your readers will have seen a six and one D historically. By that, I mean six in the line with a sweeper. Only Fiji really continue to use that format, with most sides, including my USA team, preferring to use a straight line seven up, with the man at the edge covering back in the scramble as the ‘scraper’. It’s a very fluid system and relies upon that edge man on the long side getting back and pendulum swinging to get across to be that covering sweeper.
“As two examples you’ll see France playing a slide and shallow defence, very much using the scraper as I have described, whilst New Zealand are faster and more aggressive in their rush as one line, varying with intellect and Argentina are a pure pacy blitz. Different nuances of effectively a similar system,” Friday confirmed.
Set-Piece
“And, like XVs, some of the best attacking positions come from your scrum. You have four opponents tied up, the acting scrum half makes an additional running attacker with a three on three and a lot of wide space- giving you acres to run into and a momentary numerical mismatch as the opposition scrum-half reacts to the play and has to realign his defence if his opposite number gets away from him. I often say it’s easier to score in Sevens than not score,” he chuckled.
“By, that I mean if you execute properly, trust your skills and deliver accurately, then in situations like that you should be crossing the whitewash more often than not.
“But the truth is that Sevens execution is often done under huge fatigue load. Players in the latter moments are playing with their lungs bursting, almost unable to think or move, but yet they have to deliver, think and crucially, communicate when they’re literally hanging out of their asses.
Sevens fitness is a very special thing; it’s rare that a XVs player can step into our variant without some specialist conditioning as the both the aerobic endurance and anaerobic demands of our format are quite remarkable, but the guys and girls who go from our game to the long form are well equipped to perform due to their conditioning.”
Aspirations
“In closing, whilst it’s an uphill task for us, I am really buoyant of the chances of my USA boys. We are fit, young and athletic and whilst tomorrow we’ve got the big guns of France and Fiji, we’ve beaten both sides twice in recent times – v France we’ve P5, W2 L3 and against Fiji we’ve P3 W2 L1, so anything might happen.
“We’re one of those teams that the top two or three want to avoid as they know we’re aggressive, physical and fit. If I had one concern I’d say we have been prone to overplaying at times and maybe taking risks when they’re not on, but if we can gain control of a match early, we’ve got the firepower to go a decent way in the competition.
“Our goal is simply to get a medal of some sort and that’s also key in terms of marketing Sevens back to the US market where they simply love a winner! It’s not unrealistic to hope for at least Bronze or maybe more if the breaks go our way and we win a few crucial moments, but that’s also about managing mistakes and errors down to the absolute minimum. It’s a fierce and brutal environment and the matches will be close, so those little moments, just like XVs, are so key,” concluded Friday.
“I’ll be back on Planet Rugby tomorrow with my thoughts on the first day and I am looking forward greatly to enjoying a spectacular and groundbreaking tournament.”
