Down Under, Women’s Rugby’s on the up: 7s Supremos and a New Head Coach
If you do one thing today, go and watch a bunch of clips of the Australian women’s sevens team. If you can, go and watch them in the flesh some time. It is genuinely thrilling: they are magnificent.
I had the pleasure of covering the Dubai and Cape Town legs of the new-look HSBC SVNS circuit this month, and finally got to see Charlotte Caslick and her golden girls do their thing in real life – after having only ever watched on from home, or frantically produced replays of their exploits from a television truck.
Defensively, their line flies up with an aggression and accuracy which elicits winces from spectators. They’ve all the cohesion and menace of a pack of lionesses going to work, and corner the ill-fated attacking side until they’re able to land the decisive blow. When they do, they hit like bronzed battering rams – immaculate hair bows whipping back and forth as their opponents are flattened or the ball is dislodged.
Once they have that ball, it’s game over. Checkmate: however they choose to score. Sometimes, they fizz it wide to a winged cannonball like Faith Nathan. Sometimes, they pick out a hurtling 12-second 100-metre flyer like Kaitlin Shave, and she cleaves through to cruise beneath the sticks. Sometimes, it’s a series of offloads both flashy and unerringly accurate. More often than not, they get it to Maddison Levi, who’s six foot of lithe killer instinct, with gunpowder in her boots.
They’ve not skipped a beat so far: winning a doozy of an arm wrestle with the Black Ferns in Dubai to retain their ‘Queens of the Desert’ status, and then surging to a lead so commanding against Les Bleues in Cape Town that even a red card to Levi couldn’t derail them.
They’re undefeated, full of confidence, and haven’t just thrown down an Olympic year gauntlet – but hurled one down with such force that the aftershocks were (apparently) the reason that swimming pool burst open after Sunday’s trophy presentation.
The circuit is teeming with amazing athletes, and they’re certainly not going to have things all their own way, but – for now – they’re the ones to beat, and I promise you’ll have a tonne of fun watching them strut their stuff over the remainder of the season.
They’re flying the flag for Australian rugby – easily the best team Down Under – but there’s been a development within the 15s game which also merits attention. Because, just after Maddi Levi and her similarly prodigious sister Teagan put pen to paper – committing to the Aussie 7s programme until at least 2026 – former England scrum-half Jo Yapp signed her own green and gold contract.
Under former Head Coach Jay Tregonning, the Wallaroos reached a World Cup quarter-final, and then produced one of the performances of WXV 1 in notching just their second ever win over Les Bleues. That result was bookended by a chastening defeat to the eventual champions, and a six-point win over Wales – despite going down to 13 players at one stage.
If England, New Zealand, France, and Canada are ‘the big four’ of the international game, then Australia sit towards the top of the second tier – and have made their ambitions abundantly clear with the appointment of their first full-time head coach. They want to challenge those perennial World Cup semi-finalists, and achieve unprecedented success in England come 2025.
Yapp is a 70-time Red Rose with three World Cups under her belt – including a run to the final as skipper in 2006. Her move into coaching proved not only a professional success – swiftly confirmed by back-to-back BUCS Championships with Exeter University – but benefited the national set-up hugely.
Her eye for and ability to nurture talent is formidable, and the athletes who emerged from her England U20s outfits are testament to that. Let’s hop back in time and pull up a random squad announcement. 2017. The second of a two-set series against France. Yapp selected – amongst others – Jess Breach, Lagi Tuima, Zoe Harrison, Zoe Aldcroft, Poppy Leitch, and Emma Uren. She knows her onions.
That role, and her execution within it, were key in her latest appointment. Rugby Australia’s CEO Paul Waugh made no secret of the fact: England’s system, he says, is ‘top of the heap’, and Yapp is one of those who hauled it to the game’s summit.
If the Aussies can put in place the sorts of structures which unearthed and honed those world class talents, then they’re onto a seriously good thing. Her inside knowledge of the above players, and many of the Red Roses’ other leading lights – who have repeatedly thwarted the women in gold – can’t hurt, either…
Yapp’s ability to root out and then show faith in young talents was intrinsic to her success at Worcester. She initially returned to the side where she’d played her own club rugby as a skills coach, but was soon made Director of Rugby – when she spoke about how selectively Warriors would recruit from outside their development pathways. There was such a lot of potential already in the area, she argued, that they didn’t want to throw everything into attracting super stars.
Vicky Laflin, Cara Brincat, Jemima Moss, and Akina Gondwe are all players who benefited from this wholehearted support, and went on to play a key role in the Midlands side’s progress during Yapp’s tenure. As the programme developed and the results came, increasingly established figures from around the world would join the blue and gold warriors, but there was always a Worcester core.
From a media perspective, Yapp – who’s also coached the Barbarians twice – has always been a delight to work with: honest, personable, and detailed in her analysis. She has the ability to combine her infectious passion for the game and her athletes with frank assessments of their performances, which gives you a glimpse into how she is behind the scenes: lofty standards, upheld with strong relationships.
Her players, clearly, would run through brick walls for her – and they were just starting to consistently produce impressive rugby, both dogged and dazzling, when the entire Warriors set-up was rocked to its core.
What Yapp did off-field when Worcester initially went into administration cannot be overstated: she was at the heart of their continued existence in the face of massive adversity, whilst also guiding them to increasingly impressive on-field statements. Imagine what she can achieve with financial stability: able to focus purely on performance – rather than coaching with one hand, and bailing a flood with a teacup with the other.
Then, imagine what the Wallaroos might go on to achieve in 2025 with comprehensive support for the first time. As Yapp herself observed, these women reached the last eight of a World Cup in 2022, and then finished third in WXV 1 this November, whilst semi-professional – compensating for a lack of funding and facilities with raw talent and ferocious hustle.
Australia produces fabulous out-and-out athletes, so the recruitment of someone who’s a talent ID and player development specialist is a canny move – plus she’ll be working closely with Jaime Fernandez, who’s been brought in to oversee the programme’s transition from part- to full-time.
He’s spent a decade developing pathways and cultures at Rowing Australia, so this feels a partnership with long term success in mind. They’ve a strong core squad already, and two years to mine the country for up-and-coming superstars (six, if their overarching target is that home World Cup in 2029) – not to mention what might happen if Yapp were allowed to, post-Olympics, have a chat with Tim Walsh about raiding that SVNS programme…
The appointment isn’t just a sea change moment for the Australian game, and testament to what a high calibre coach Yapp is – it should also leave her better-placed than ever to coach the Red Roses one day.
Her name was thrown around a lot after Simon Middleton’s departure was announced, but it felt incredibly unlikely the RFU – with a must-win home World Cup two and a half years away – were going to appoint anyone without previous senior international experience.
England are the best Test match side in women’s rugby, and that’s been acknowledged by the appointment of a hugely experienced Test match coach.
Just as Ronan O’Gara’s coaching ascendancy has profited from his worldwide mission to expose himself to first-rate set-ups, Yapp will be a much stronger candidate for that top job after taking the Aussies to a World Cup.
It’s hard to see anyone stopping Caslick and co. scorching their way to gold at the Paris Olympics next year, and – all of a sudden – it’s exhilarating to consider just how disruptively excellent the Wallaroos could be by 2025, guided there by someone who’s captained one World Cup side to a final, developed some of the lynchpins of the most successful team in the sport’s history, and proven that – even in adversity – she’s a force to be reckoned with.
Comments on RugbyPass
Great work Owen Franks. A great of this team, scoring his first try for the Crusaders since 2010.He was beaming, justifiably. A fine win, he and the rest did the job up front.
1 Go to commentsDanny Care. Lang in die tand.
1 Go to commentsBig empty stadium does nothing for atmosphere but munster are playing well with solid performance
1 Go to commentsYes, Fiji can win the World Cup! With that belief plus their christian faith🙏 and hard work it is achievable. Great article. Ian Duncan Fiji resident 1981-84
2 Go to commentsInteresting comments about Touch. England’s hosting the Touch World Cup this year and the numbers have exploded since their last World Cup in 2019, something like 70% more teams and 40 nations taking part. And England Touch have made a big thing about how many universities are in their BUCS University Touch Championship as well as Sport England membership. Can only see this growing even more domestically as more people become aware of it
10 Go to comments“Cortez Ratima is light years ahead of anyone on current form, while TJ Perenara has also skyrocketed into contention following the unfortunate injury to the talented Cam Roigard.” At last some sanity. Hitherto so many pundits have been wittering on about Finlay Christie to the point one wondered if they were observing a FC in a parallel universe where the FC they saw wasnt just the mediocre Shayne Philpott project of Fosters hapless AB reign in the real world. Ratima, Perenara and Fakatava are the ONLY logical 9s for Razor now Roigard is crocked.
2 Go to commentsThis game was just as painful as the Hurricanes game. It was real fork-in-the-eye stuff.
2 Go to commentsNow if they could just fire the Crusaders ground PA guy who likes to play his dance music and just loves the sound of his own voice the entire game, even when play is going on. And I thought their brass band thing of a few years ago was bad.
5 Go to commentsUnfortunately when you lose by far the two form players this season in Roigard and Aumua, you're left replacing two game changing Tanks with a couple of pea-shooters. Which is also about the speed of TJs pass.
4 Go to commentsBit rich coming from the guy with zero loyalty to anyone or any team, including happily taking a players place in a league world cup squad because well, SBW wanted to play in it and thus an already named player got told he was no longer going. And airing stuff like this, which may or may not be true, doesn't exactly say you're a stand up guy either SBW. Just looking to keep his name in lights as usual.
38 Go to commentsTamati Tua. …the Taniwha NPC midfielder. Ollie Sapsford, Hawkes Bay NPC midfielder…doing well
4 Go to commentsFiji deserve to be in the rugby championship, fans love seeing the Fijian national team play, the Fijian Drua is a wonderful idea but the players can still be stolen to play for NZ and AUS…
2 Go to commentsThe first concern for this afternoon are wheather forecast…
1 Go to commentsWhy cant I watch Rugby games please?
1 Go to commentsBeautiful shot from Finau, end of story. Gutted for Shaun Stevenson though.
4 Go to commentsThe Chiefs definitely didn’t win ugly. They had the superior scrum, a dominant lineout, and their defence was excellent once the Waratahs scored their two tries (thanks to some lucky refereeing calls mind you). They put pressure on the Waratahs lineout throughout the game, and the mind boggles as to why the referee did not award a yellow card or a penalty try against the Waratahs for repeated scrum infringements on their own try line before Narawa’s first try. And the Chiefs were slick with their passing and running angles on attack. It was a dominant performance all round, even with many questionable refereeing decisions.
1 Go to commentsWasnt late. Ref 2 assistants andTMO all saw it so who are you to say it was?
4 Go to commentsAre the Brumbies playing the Blues twice in a row?
4 Go to commentsBig difference from the Saders. Forwards really muscled up and laid a solid platform. Scooter brought some steel and I liked the loosie combination. Newell has been rather disappointing this season but stepped up big time - happy also to see Franks dot down. He should do that more often! Reihana had a good game and there seems to be more flair and invention with him in the saddle. McNicoll plays well from the back and is reliable plus inventive when he joins the line. Keep it up chaps!
5 Go to comments🤦♂️🤣 who cares who’s the best . All I know is the All Blacks have the star coach but have few star players now …
35 Go to comments