Shake-up For England Sevens

England Sevens head coach Ben Ryan to step down after more than six years in the job

That's a bit of a surprise. I though Ryan was keen to be involved in Rio. England had a poor season this year, though, so Ryan might have decided on his own to step down or I suppose the RFU might have dropped a hint they thought it was for the best.

It does mean England needs a new coaching set-up as we run up to the Olympics. There's no guarantee, of course, that England coaches will be running the GB sevens team.

Mike Friday has thrown his hat in the ring. It's well-known that he and Ryan have a frosty relationship but he coached England before and did well with the Kenyans. I don't really know who else is likely to be in the running.

Ryan's Eng team have been pretty poor for a few seasons now. They've looked way off the pace and behind in tactics etc

He needed to go

No great surprise. England's from has been patchy given the resources that they have available. That said, I know even less about 7s tactics than for 15s so I may be missing the point completely

And what was going on with that tequilla sunrise nightmare?

GloriousEmpire wrote:And what was going on with that tequilla sunrise nightmare?

Sorry - you have completely lost me on that one

http://www.rfu.com/news/2012/march/newsarticles/290312_jap7s_ryancolumn

Just because your boss is ginger, doesn't mean your kit needs to be.

With you now!!
I do have sympathy with the English players, though. Even though I am Scottish, even I find it difficult to take anything said by someone who is ginger, seriously

I thought he was a good coach, but somewhere along the line he didn't evolve when the game did. Things seemed to go wrong around the time he brought in Armitage to try to play a role similar to DJ Forbes. Armitage was just the wrong fit for the game and I think the slide started there. Just my opinion. He had his share of success, ginger or not. Maybe around the time Gollings retired too. Dunno. Just pleased though because that loss to England at Twickenham where England scored twice in the last 30 seconds really hurt.

The problem with the England 7s recently has been consistency. They've had some really good results and then gone horribly off the boil. Gollings was a talisman and a big loss.

A change is probably a good thing.

Ryan did very well to drill a regular squad for the first time but he seemed to lose the ability to integrate new players. When we suffered a few injuries, we lost all shape, especially in defence.

We did reasonably well with Olly Phillips in that pivot role.
I thought that Ryans predecessor was a much more successful 7's coach - cant remember his name.
Mike Friday I think? Current coach of Kenya.

Mike Friday is Ben Elton's twin brother.

Does no-one else feel the calibre of England's 7s player has just hugely dropped off. Used to feel more of a testing ground for top young speedsters but in recent years it feels like there's a lot more also-rans and randoms, with a few players who couldn't crack the 15 code switching across as well.

Personally on reading this thread, the thought that jumped into my head was that over the last couple of seasons the England sevens team has been the best prepared team from the Northern Hemisphere, and I would have thought Ryan would be entitled to some credit for that.

aucklandlaurie wrote:
Personally on reading this thread, the thought that jumped into my head was that over the last couple of seasons the England sevens team has been the best prepared team from the Northern Hemisphere, and I would have thought  Ryan would be entitled to some credit for that.

Even in the dark ages, England were usually the best prepared Northern Hemisphere team - we won the inaugural Sevens World Cup in 1993 - so that isn't a status which would reflect well on Ryan.

We also came second behind NZ in the IRB Sevens series twice, once in 2002/3 and again in 2003/4. We then slipped to third in 2004/5 before regaining second the following year, this time behind Fiji.

Ryan took over in 2007. We've never finished better than 3rd under him, registered 5th once, and this year recorded our worst ever finish since 2000/01. We did get to the final of this year's World Cup but that looked as anomalous as our appearance in the 2007 XV final.

Ryan has pushed hard to get the RFU to understand the importance of running a full-time squad for sevens but our results under him have not kept pace with previous performances.

I see some press reports suggest that Ryan has stepped down in order to present himself as an unaffiliated Olympic coach for Rio. I'm worried that he might be a sevens version of Woodward. Very good at sorting out the mess he's presented with by the RFU, but unable to go on to assimilate talent and determine new tactics at the highest level.

Bring back Mat Tait! He'd show the Kiwi's how to play...

Hood83 wrote:Does no-one else feel the calibre of England's 7s player has just hugely dropped off. Used to feel more of a testing ground for top young speedsters but in recent years it feels like there's a lot more also-rans and randoms, with a few players who couldn't crack the 15 code switching across as well.

I would agree with that. If England want to be more successful at 7s then they need to get some of the XVs players.

Would love to see the likes of Ian Clark,James Short and Charlie Walker in the England 7s set up for example.

England Sevens would love to get their hands on more Premiership players but the clubs are under no obligation to release them, and so generally don't.

There are now some full-time, centrally-contracted players which is an advance Ryan helped usher in. We aren't short of pace in our team, it's the defensive organization which has been poor.

Ollie Lidsey-Hague should go to 7's. To me he looks like he'll struggle in 15's.

Just imagining a team of Banahan, Short, Tait, Lindsey-Hague, Wade, May, Walker.