The HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series standings boast a surprising leader — but not to their coach, Mike Friday.
The giants of rugby sevens have always been, in no particular order, New Zealand, South Africa, Fiji and England.The Americans won last weekend’s USA Sevens tournament in Las Vegas, defeating Samoa 27-0 in the final. It’s the second consecutive year the U.S. has won their home tournament.
The focus of the last 10 months has been all about building this diversity into an advantage. Friday has been coaching the Americans since 2014. In three of the four seasons he’s been in charge the Americans have finished sixth. In Rio in 2016, the Americans crashed out of pool play, beating only the host Brazilians and losing narrowly to both Argentina and the eventual gold medallists Fiji.“They thought they were doing it for the Sevens World Cup … but it was really about the next two years.”
“It allowed them to have more informal conversations and self-coaching in the room. That’s powerful, because they’re still in competition with one another and there’s a lot of performance testosterone. “I think I tried to push them too hard to soon,” Friday said. “We still had to get the rugby right. I was bombarding them, to get what it means in terms of being a rugby professional. We had to get efficient in order to excel at the performance of rugby first.”
The team beat the French in their final pool game Saturday, setting up a quarterfinal battle with the always-ferocious South Africans.
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