Olympics: Tietjens eyes All Black talent to boost Rio sevens squad

Will Ben Smith be on Gordon Tietjens' Olympic Sevens wish list? Photo / Dean Purcell

Think about a sevens wish-list for next year's Olympics.

The maturity can come from men like DJ Forbes, Tim Mikkelson, Scott Curry and Gillies Kaka, but there is room for a raid of All Black talent in a 12-man team for Rio.

The first inkling about coach Gordon Tietjens' plans will come in August when he names a 26-man training squad he'll trial in 10 tournaments before paring them down to his Olympic group.

All Black captain-in-waiting Kieran Read has passed on the chance, but comrades such as Ben Smith, Israel Dagg, Sonny Bill Williams, Julian and Ardie Savea, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith, TJ Perenara, Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Augustine Pulu, Victor Vito and Liam Messam will come into discussions.

When his opening squad is picked, Tietjens will name 16 contracted players and a further 10 Super Rugby and All Black players.

The category A players will concentrate on sevens; the category B men will play at least four tournaments as well as their Super Rugby commitments.

"We cannot have too many Super Rugby players from one franchise so we will have to work through the lists with the coaches and see if we can adapt," Tietjens said.

"Players have an option to choose whether they want to be fulltime sevens or combine it with Super Rugby. I've worked through a list and some players need to be in the A group but others can be in the B group because they have played for me before or can adapt and make the transition in a short time."

Tietjens will use many ideas from the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, for which the sevens squad arrived about a fortnight before their competition to acclimatise and watch and support their female colleagues.

The template for a sevens athlete concentrated on conditioning and that was Tietjens' main concern about players coming from 15-a-side rugby to sevens.

"We find 15s guys coming into our programme who go for a couple of days and then seize up because of the extra running. We clock up a lot more kilometres than Super Rugby guys.

"We are looking for explosive, strong athletes with less body fat.

"Take Sonny Bill Williams - someone like him has all the attributes to be a fine sevens player if he got used to the rigours of the game.

"Victor Vito is another in that sort of mould - that's why if players like that want to go to Rio they'll have to be with us for some time."

Sevens had changed, he said, and so had Tietjens' strategy. There was so much more analysis than in his early days coaching.

Then if you had several players with the X-factor that would be enough, but these days so much analysis is done on them that they are shut down quickly. Everyone now had to have some X-factor, high fitness levels and determination.

The beauty of sevens was that it allowed players to express themselves in the sort of space they didn't get too often in Super Rugby.

"Guys who have a head-start in this are fulltime sevens players, and you have to have that core of experience to rely on.

"I'll go to different tournaments with different selections so I can see the best mix which suits us.

"The real challenge is the Fijian team and how to play them. We are rated as top sides with Fiji and South Africa now and England and Australia are fighting out the fourth automatic berth for Rio."

Tietjens' sevens squad plays this season's last two IRB Sevens tournaments next month in Scotland and London.