TheIn the men’s defeat to reigning Commonwealth and World champions New Zealand, England looked naïve in attack despite keeping the game scoreless for the first half. The experience New Zealand was able to bring in 34-year-old veteran Scott Curry made a big difference after the break.
This difference in experience levels can be seen in the way the Kiwis held firm not to concede, despite good work from England’s 22-year-old Api Bavadra.
England captain Davis admitted a lack of experience and the number of contracted players was a problem.
“It is difficult. I know it’s a cliché but you can only control what you can control – obviously those decisions are made by people other than us and we’re just trying to make the most of the position we’re in and if that means that we’re going to tour with eight contracted guys, we do that and we bring other guys. We can talk about buying from everyone who has been outstanding. Of course, we would like to have more contracts, but this is just the reality.
“I’m disappointed [with the results] but I think we did what we set out to do in terms of making New Zealand work. We just wanted to stay in the fight from moment to moment and we did that,” said the 29-year-old.
“If you look at it objectively, losing two out of three pool games, especially in a home tournament, is far from ideal. Last night we talked about how we had 12 Commonwealth debuts yesterday [across the men’s and women’s sides] which is something we are extremely proud of but of course we would like to be in the quarter-finals and now we have the opportunity to learn and grow [in the placing matches].”
It looks like England missed an opportunity to step up their seventh innings in front of a home crowd. New Zealand’s men performed well due to the continuity of their specialist sevens, but England have talented players who could have been used with the likes of Bath’s Will Muir and Richard de Carpentier, as well as Saracens star Tokyo Ben . Harris.
Could something have been done to bring these players into the case? Can senior players like Dan Norton, who retired earlier this year for a special Birmingham song, be convinced?
Regardless of the answers, the newly formed Team GB announced this week should be looking to New Zealand for inspiration on how to run a successful sevens programme. It’s sad because England had one for many years.
