The Australian Men’s Sevens team returned to training at Narrabeen  last week in preparation for the upcoming World Series which begins in Dubai in December.

After an unforgettable few months, commentator Gordon Bray interviewed coach Andy Friend at a Rugby Business Network event in Sydney on Monday evening and spoke about the Olympic experience and the future of Sevens in Australia.

Below are some of Friend’s most insightful comments.

On the Olympic tournament:

We gave ourselves every chance, we worked extremely hard leading into the tournament and we had the belief and the vision that we would go on and win that gold medal. Unfortunately in the game of Sevens things don’t always go your way and if you make errors you get hurt.

We played our worst game of football all year in the opening game against France. We were thrilled to watch the girls win their gold medal the night before, but in a funny way it probably put a bit of pressure on us and we didn’t play the way we wanted to play and ended up chasing our tails.

We managed to beat South Africa in the other pool game but couldn’t get past them in the quarters and our dream was over.

On the future of the squad: 

At the end of every Olympic cycle, players are going to move on. Cam Clark has just gone to the Waratahs, he’ll be a big loss. Tom Cusack looks like he’ll move on as well. Pama Fou is heading to the Rebels, Allan Fa’alava’au is having a year off and there will probably be a few other boys that will leave as well.

You have to respect the desire of these boys. They’ve given their heart and soul to Sevens, a version of the game that suits some players, but every young boy grows up wanting to be a Wallaby so we need to respect that and ideally in time, we’ll get them to stay in Sevens but at the moment we do have a but of a hole to fill now. The beauty of it is with the momentum that Sevens has gained, there are a lot of young guys and girls that want to play Sevens so we are looking for new blood.

On the ideal Sevens recruit:

First and foremost, they’ve got to be a footballer. You can look for an athlete like the American Eagles have done with Carlin Isles and you can give him the football and he’ll be hard to stop but those type of athletes don’t have the football experience that our players have. We want footballers, but we also want big men and quick men, that’s our game.

The issue for us is that Sevens are chasing the same athletes as XVs, rugby league, AFL. We want big, tall men who are quick. Our problem is we’ve got the least amount of money so we attract the players that really do want to play Sevens. At the moment we are out there looking for quick guys. We’ve got plenty of skill and toughness, so what we’re looking for now is speed.

We’ve got an Olympic sprinter who has said that he wants to play, but as I said earlier, first and foremost, you’ve got to be a footballer so we’ll have a look at him but ideally you want guys that have played the game.

On Fiji:

They were phenomenal at the Olympics and it really is there national game. They grow up wanting to play Sevens.

It was interesting talking to (Fiji coach) Ben Ryan, who did an amazing job and has now left Fiji, he said to me the morning after, “I don’t do a lot with those guys, I just get them on the bus.” He did a lot more than that, he’s very modest but he said the players would come to him and say this is how we want to play. He did an amazing job with them but they are unbelievable athletes.

If you allow them to play their style of rugby, they are very tough to beat. We had some success against them last season, and our motto is unrelenting and clinical. The unrelenting part of us, we go out against Fiji like little Terriers dogs and try and get them on the ground because they don’t like that. If you look at their training grounds, they are all mud and dirt so they don’t like getting on the ground. If we can get them on the deck and upset them, then we can beat them.

In the final against England, 29-0 at half time, no one can beat them when they play like that.

I was pleased for them. If we weren’t going to win, I was glad that they did. The celebrations are probably still going on.

On the future of Sevens in Australia:

We need to be playing more Sevens and that is what is starting to happen. There is a national championship, which for the men is in Adelaide in November, youth is in Perth, next year we’ll have a national competition for the women.

I think a big part of our disappointment in not winning at the Olympics was the fact that we missed a really great opportunity to grow the sport in Australia. Especially considering what the girls have done, we now have an audience watching Sevens and if we could have gone on and won, the impact would have been huge.

If we can win on the biggest stages, we’ll pick up rugby league players, we’ll pick up AFL players, rowers, anyone that wants to play the game for their country and stand on an Olympic podium.

On players switching between Sevens and XVs:

I think we’ll get to the stage where we’ll have players that start in Sevens and finish in Sevens. I think we’ll also have players that can swap, but they’ll be fairly unique. In the past, Sevens was a stepping stone to bigger things but we’ve gone beyond that now.

I think we’ll see more players stay in Sevens because the skills you need are so specific and the physiological side of it is so different. An average XVs player works at 80 metres a minute on a GPS, Sevens players hit 110, which doesn’t sound like a big difference until you are doing it, it’s a massive difference. Physiologically, the difference in the two athletes is getting further and further apart.