This weekend marks D-Day for the Australian Men’s Sevens side.

After finishing 5th in last year’s World Series and failing to qualify automatically for next year’s Olympics, Australia must win this weekend’s Oceania Qualification tournament in Auckland to book an automatic spot in Rio.

“Yeah it’s been a long time coming this tournament, but that has been really good. We’ve had a lot of time to prepare for this so there are no excuses,” veteran Con Foley told Rugby News from Auckland earlier today.

Whilst perennial powerhouses Fiji and New Zealand have already qualified, Australia still face an uphill battle, in what is essentially a knockout tournament.

“Samoa are the major threat, but we’ve got Tonga, Cook Islands and Nauru in our pool so we’ve had plenty of time to look at them and work out a game plan to take them on,” Foley said.

Although on paper Australia go into the tournament as favourites, Foley said his side wouldn’t be taking any of their opponents lightly and remain level headed leading into the weekend.

“We’ve always got an expectation to win, so it’s not a whole lot different. Having to win the whole tournament is something new but we are all fairly relaxed about it and comfortable with that pressure.

“We are looking at this weekend like we look at any tournament, we want to win every match we play.”

The Australian side played New Zealand in an unofficial six-match series in September, before fielding a near full strength side at the Central Coast Sevens last month, where they defeated a Fijian shadow side in the final.

“We had a long time off without playing any rugby after the end of last year’s World Series,so getting some game time over the last few weeks was great,” Foley said.

“It’s really difficult to be match fit without playing tournaments, so the Central Coast and New Zealand was great in that regard, but we’ve also had four or five months of really solid pre-season training so that has put us in good stead.”

Interim head coach Tim Walsh named an extended 15-man squad for the two-day tournament earlier this week, with Wallaby Henry Speight named despite only joining the program on Monday.

“We’ve had Henry Speight and Henry Hutchinson come in and they’ve only just added to the squad. We’ve still got that really solid group of guys together that have been around for a while, so we’ve got the experience to do really well this weekend.”

Whilst a host of 15-a-side superstars have shown interest in converting to Sevens for next year’s Olympics, Foley said he thought it would take players time to adapt to the short form of the game.

“It’s a tricky one, it’s hard to know and to be honest, we’ve been concentrating on this tournament coming up and not thinking too much about it.

“Adding a guy like Henry Speight to the group can never hurt and we are open to those type of guys coming into the program if they are willing to commit to the side for a while and want to join the full time squad,” Foley added.

Australian Men’s Sevens squad for Olympic Qualification tournament

Cameron Clark, Tom Cusack, Allan Fa’alava’au, Con Foley, Pama Fou, Lewis Holland, Henry Hutchison, Greg Jeloudev, Ed Jenkins, Tom Lucas, Sam Myers, Jesse Parahi, Henry Speight, James Stannard, Michael Wells.