How to create a champion women’s Sevens side in three months

A few weeks after watching the Australian women’s Sevens side win a gold medal at the Rio Olympics, a young netballer from Cronulla in Sydney’s south decided she wanted to play rugby. Cassie Staples was already a State League netballer and had been training at an elite level for five years, but the 24-year old now had a new goal. “I sent a training clip of her deadlifting 130kg and doing muscle ups to Tim Rapp at the Waratahs and he forwarded it onto the ARU,” Justin Lang, an exercise physiologist at Live Athletic told Rugby News. “Tim Walsh (Australian women’s coach) saw the video and invited her in to do some testing and she ran the second quickest time over 40 metres in the squad.” Walsh told Staples that while he was impressed with her athletic ability, she needed to learn to play rugby. He said the current Australian women’s squad had three to four years of experience and that the best way to learn the game was to play it. “There were no Sevens programs in
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