Paul Treu: Springboks in their own right

South Africa's World Series-winning Sevens coach Paul Treu

In his second column, South Africa's World Series-winning Sevens coach Paul Treu explains how he feels his players have taken that next step up in the sport's pecking order by committing fully to the game of Sevens.

People often ask me: So Paul, how did you finally win the World Series? And it always takes a long time to answer the question because it's not something that happened overnight. If I'm being honest, it was a strategic business plan that I submitted to SA Rugby probably as much as three years ago.

The big turning point for me was the 2005/06 season when we lost against England and I think it was three games in a row. We played them in Los Angeles and lost 38-0, the next tournament in Hong Kong we lost in the semis 24-0 and then we also lost in Singapore.

I decided I couldn't take it any more, it was like we were going to these tournaments with our hands tied behind our backs and fighting a losing battle. We were assembling three days before and then leaving for a tournament underprepared and underconditioned.

Luckily for us all, SA Rugby bought into the plan to come up with something different, something that would work for South Africa. Not to copy New Zealand or any of the other teams, and that was a strong statement of intent.

So I started looking at facilities at the University of Stellenbosch, which were ideal, and we moved there in 2007 with centrally-contracted players and had to wait a little while to get the rewards. But now we call it home and it's where my players live and breathe Sevens rugby.

Will other countries do the same? Maybe. When New Zealand had won the World Series eight times out of nine seasons, everybody looked to change their styles to mirror what they were doing. Copying them was the obvious thing to try and do.

Massive decisions

Now I think that some of the Unions may well start to try and do something similar to what we have done. There are investors out there willing to pump money into Sevens now, which is exciting, and I think that it's going to become very difficult for teams to compete and keep up if the players and the coaches are only really doing Sevens part-time.

The rest of us are just going to carry on developing our Sevens programmes better and faster and the gap between us and those teams doing things on an amateur basis could get bigger.

There are some massive decisions coming up for Sevens over the next couple of months with the sport trying to get into the Olympics, and it goes without saying that if we get in a lot of the teams will get that backing from their governments too, so you will get a lot more countries competing.

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But even if Sevens doesn't get into the Olympics, I think we'll still have that support because Sevens and the World Series isn't going to disappear, it's simply too good a sporting product these days and too many people know that in too many countries.

It's a really important component in the IRB's development structures for rugby, and it's also important for individual Unions, especially developing rugby nations who don't necessarily have the numbers yet, or maybe the physiques, to compete in fifteens. We all want to globalise rugby and, with or without the Olympics, the way to do that is Sevens.

I think that our vision and our strategy is also much more than just building around the Olympics. We want to be the best and stay at the top, dominating World Sevens and taking that programme forward.

And I think that now we are doing Sevens properly, it has also become more important to the people governing rugby in South Africa. They're getting a return on their investment. A few years ago I think we were ranked pretty low, under the Springboks, Super 14 and the Age Grade teams, but now the emphasis has shifted and it's a really important component in its own right.

Catch 22 situation

The situation leaves you with a bit of a catch 22 where you have to make tough decisions: Do we want to be the best in Sevens, or do we want to develop 15-a-side players? Because these days the two aren't necessarily happening at the same time.

Some of the youngsters like Lionel Mapoe and Phillip Snyman will still use it as a stepping stone and go on to become superb 15-a-side players, something England and Argentina have had real success with using the Sevens programme. So part of my job is to help identify the best young players to work with and help them go on to become Springboks.

But some of the players are with me to become superb Sevens specialists, to win the World Series, the Commonwealth Games and maybe one day the Olympics. The sport of Sevens is their pinnacle. About 10 out of our 17 that played this year might play Super 14 but they will never play for the Springboks so Sevens is a choice they have made.

While they are contracted to the set-up and living with us in Stellenbosch they won't play any fifteens. They're off now for a few weeks but they'll reassemble in September, we'll have a warm-up tournament in Namibia, the Singapore Cricket Club Sevens in the first week of November and then we're into the Series.

It's a choice they've made. They make a good living out of Sevens, they travel all over the world and they know that they're a Springbok team in their own right.