NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Sport / Olympics

The Big Read: From rugby OE to the Spanish Olympic team

Chris Rattue
By Chris Rattue
Sports Writer·NZ Herald·
23 Jun, 2016 06:30 AM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Spain's Glen Rolls. Photo /Getty

Spain's Glen Rolls. Photo /Getty

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

What started as a bit of OE rugby fun has turned Glen Rolls into an Olympian.

Or Olympian in waiting to be more accurate, as the former Napier Boys High School first XV and Hawkes Bay sevens player waits to hear confirmation he is in Spain's squad for Rio.

The Spaniards, who aren't even on the international sevens circuit, shocked Samoa and plenty of others with a fulltime try to win the repechage in Monaco and claim the 12th and final Rio spot.

The hardest of sporting hearts could only melt watching their veteran captain Pablo Feijoo - known as Gandalf after the wise Lord of the Rings wizard - shed tears at Stade Louis II.
"We've been working some of us for 15 years for this," he told a TV interviewer.

The 29-year-old Rolls is the only foreigner among Spain's 14 contracted sevens players, although injury forced him out of the Monaco tournament.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

This is one of those come from nowhere stories, where good timing meets a bloke who grabs a rare opportunity with both hands. It also means Rolls is perfectly placed to reveal how a rugby backwater has ended up at the Olympics.

"It has been labelled here as a miracle without looking behind it, as if we came together overnight," he tells the Herald from Madrid.

...You were lucky if a team went more than two phases. I remember thinking 'what the hell and I doing here

Glen Rolls

Rolls has also been a long work in process. The openside flanker was playing in Christchurch while studying at Lincoln University and was noticed by a local club coach from Spain. A half-season offer arrived and in 2008 Rolls headed to Valladolid, Spain's rugby capital, but wasn't too impressed initially.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"The refereeing was atrocious and back then you were lucky if a team went more than two phases. I remember thinking 'what the hell and I doing here," he says.

Going to the Olympics turned out to be the long-term answer as about a dozen 15-a-side matches for Spain morphed into a sevens career from 2011.

Enter Ignacio "Tiki" Inchausti, who played at centre for Spain in the 1999 World Cup. The 43-year-old sevens coach is a policeman by morning, before heading off each day for one of his various rugby coaching assignments.

Rolls says: "He is the architect of this, an unreal man who thinks like foreign coaches, whose mind is always open.

Discover more

Olympics

Sevens to break new ground after Olympic Games debut

04 Jun 07:01 AM
Sport|rugby

Eddie Jones' suspicious theory on Hayne

09 Jun 04:55 AM
Olympics

Henry Speight out of Olympics, done for season

15 Jun 03:44 AM
Opinion

Chris Rattue: I'm no longer a rugby sevens naysayer

22 Jun 03:30 AM

"He was fed up with how s!@#$%^&* the sevens were. Previously it was a ragged bunch of individuals coming together as mates and going on drinking trips.

"He got 16 players to train in summer as fully paid professionals, two or three times a day over two to three years. The level skyrocketed and they started beating the likes of Wales, Scotland, Russia, Portugal. Before that, they were getting beaten by 40 to 50 points."

It has been far from a smooth ride due to changes in administration and Spanish rugby debt which hit $3m. Spain's time on the World Series circuit was short-lived and they are still battling to re-qualify through European tournaments. At one point, the sevens programme was scrapped, leaving Rolls "out on the street". They have backing again, although there is also a lot of self help.

One of Rolls' best friends is sevens team mate Ignacio Martin, who filled a backpack and headed to Fiji for two years in order to improve by learning from the best sevens players in the world. That led to the squad paying for their own month-long camp in Fiji this year.

With Rio calling, the national sports ministry paid for sports psychology sessions two weeks before the Monaco tournament where exercises included blindfolded players being surrounded by team mates who offered compliments.

Rolls said: "I know that Gilbert Enoka has been a key to the All Blacks' but sports psychology is still a novelty in Spanish rugby.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"Self belief is critical for us. As our captain says, when our spirit and team work is good we are strong, but when it isn't we don't have the individual brilliance and get hammered.

"We only had four or five hours with him but it was unreal - afterwards you felt 'get me a Spanish jersey now, I want to play a tournament now'".

Rolls, who has completed a masters in sports management, is married to a Spanish physiotherapist, Saila Insua, but his immersion into Spanish life is not totally complete.

He is still amused by schedules for sevens camps which include designated times for a siesta - the traditional Spanish afternoon nap. And of course he is still living in a world where rugby is a non-event for almost everyone.

"Hardly anyone in Spain cares for rugby or understands it," he says.

"There is still a mindset that it is quite violent, but that is changing slowly and sevens is already starting to re-shape the game globally. A lot will happen after the Olympics.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"Sevens is easier to understand than 15s, the players don't have to be massive, and it is more exciting...it will click and grow immensely after Rio."

Even the 15-a-side version is having an unusual burst of publicity though.

With European football taking over France's big stadiums, their Top 14 final between Dan Carter's Racing 92 and a Toulon team minus the injured Ma'a Nonu will be played before almost 100,000 spectators at Barcelona football's Nou Camp this weekend.

And the April Spanish club final in Valladolid drew a 26,000 crowd with 10,000 more in a carpark fan zone. The match was attended for the first time by King Felipe VI.

Now, the Olympics call giving Spanish rugby another lift, and a delighted Kiwi the chance to live an unexpected dream.

Rolls says: "Not going to Monaco may knock my Olympic chances but I can prove my worth at two European tournaments before then.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"It's incredible really. I never dreamed of becoming an Olympian back in New Zealand. To be so close is unreal, surreal. Words can't describe it."

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Olympics

Olympics

'World-leading': New study addresses concussion risks for female athletes

08 Jul 09:12 PM
Olympics

Olympic champion Butcher wins kayak cross World Cup gold

29 Jun 10:44 PM
Olympics

The staggering figure the Paris Olympics cost French taxpayers

23 Jun 06:29 PM

From early mornings to easy living

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Olympics

'World-leading': New study addresses concussion risks for female athletes

'World-leading': New study addresses concussion risks for female athletes

08 Jul 09:12 PM

The new technology installed will detect signs of concussion from blood.

Olympic champion Butcher wins kayak cross World Cup gold

Olympic champion Butcher wins kayak cross World Cup gold

29 Jun 10:44 PM
The staggering figure the Paris Olympics cost French taxpayers

The staggering figure the Paris Olympics cost French taxpayers

23 Jun 06:29 PM
'It was different': Dame Lisa Carrington on end of remarkable 16-year streak

'It was different': Dame Lisa Carrington on end of remarkable 16-year streak

07 Jun 10:00 PM
Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP