I do not have Fred Ollows’s rugby brain - I am merely a fan and former player, but I have a few thoughts on our Olympics (past and present) and World Series performances. It seems to me that it’s not (merely) that we played badly. It’s that our game seems to be frozen in time, while the rest of the sevens world seems to have moved on.
There used to be, in the videotape era, a show on British television called Bosh! It was a highlight reel of the biggest hits of the week. It didn’t matter whether the hit cost you forward momentum, or even cost you the ball and resulted in a try for the opposing team. What mattered is how good it looked for the cameras. We’re now in the era of the social media viral post, and we seem to not have moved on from the Bosh! mentality. We’re still playing route one, run-through-brick-walls rugby. It’s spectacular when it works, but can produce a stultifying, sideways-moving game, with little forward momentum. Good teams, with nimble players, simply learn to play around this, with quick offloads and (if possible), avoidance of contact. In defence, they put more players on the ball carrier in order to bring him to ground, sure that he will commit to contact with ball in hand. Five years ago, we were the best in the world at contesting the breakdown. We turned the ball over regularly, and no one could take the ball off us in contact. But five years is half a decade. Obama was still President. Those tactics no longer work.
Another issue is (actually, at this point let me hand over to my fellow Laibon, Washe Kazungu) ‘We are struggling with decision-making on the pitch at times. Which is down to more work to be done during training so that players don’t have to “think” a lot during the game, but instead execute what they know has worked very well a lot of times. Once in a while we may get moments when we rely on exceptional talent (and we do have exceptionally talented individuals in the squad), but more often we will have to rely on being very good at executing the basics.’ Thank you, Washe. In other words, we need to have certain moves, skills and options as second nature, almost like how the Fijians do it. Pop the ball knowing there’s a man there to take it at pace. Pass wide off either hand, at speed, with no hesitation and with pinpoint accuracy.
Related to this is the tightness of the modern game. All too often (and if you know my views, you do know that I have been complaining about this for a long while), we leave points on the field. Score hard-won tries, and botch the conversions. Teams like the Blitzbokke put over their conversions from as near the touchline as makes no difference. In knockout games where we lose by two or four points, this is a part of the game that cannot be overlooked any longer. It’s the difference between a series victory and ending up in tenth place.
We will argue until the end of time whether the 280kph shunt was Lewis’ or Max’s fault. We will argue until the end of time whether we should have slowed the game down when we were awarded the penalty against the United States, instead of the quick one with the cross kick. A few millimetres one way or the other and it would have been a try and a win (and a likely quarter final slot), instead of a US possession and a hundred-metre try and a win. But remember that we were awarded more than half a dozen penalties against South Africa, and converted none of them.
There is much more. What is the role of tactical kicking in sevens? How much of a mix of experience and new blood should we have? How much of a factor is our abysmal investment in sport in general? Should our players dance so much (it makes them loved on the world circuit, but shouldn’t they do it *only* when they win)?
The rugby sevens team is the greatest Kenya has ever produced, and teams like the Harambee Stars would kill for a fraction of their on-field success, their global reputation and their impact on our imagination and sense of self-belief as a country. We will still set our alarms for the witch’s hour to watch our boys (and nowadays, girls) battle it out with the world’s best, in the belief that *they* can also be the world’s best. But we cannot afford a slow decline, given how difficult it is to climb out of that. Just ask the cricket boys.
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