'You don't go into sevens for the money... the guys at the top of the Scotland set-up will be on £35k'
Mark Robertson is anxious. Not about his coaching, corporate speaking or his television commentary on the Sevens World Series, but the introductory speech he’s going to have to deliver – in French – in about two months’ time.
A former winger in XVs, a pillar of the Scotland Sevens and their wonderful transformation, and an Olympic silver medallist with Britain in 2016, Robertson is off to Clermont. There, he will join the strength and conditioning staff of the French juggernaut on a two-year contract.
That leaves him somewhere in the region of eight weeks to craft that all-important first impression. “Je m’appelle, Mark, et j’adore le seevins” ain’t going to cut it.
“I’ll have to stand up and tell them a bit about me and try and be a little bit comical. That should be easy enough given the fact I’ll be struggling with the old French,” said Robertson to RugbyPass.
“I’ve actually got a mate over coaching the Chinese Women’s Sevens and he spent three or four years in France. I’m going to send the speech over in English and he’s going to send it back in French. I’ll have to put it in Google translate to make sure there are no dodgy things in there – I don’t trust him.”
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Robertson always has been one to plough his own furrow. After retiring in 2017, he was assigned to work with the academy players of Scotland’s Borders region and actually spent over a year training the national team. Then, he promptly resigned from Gregor Townsend’s staff.
“Everybody was like, ‘You’re a numpty doing that’, but I knew it was right because I wanted to focus more on the one job,” he explained. “As a player, I didn’t have the management skills to be able to do two things at once and I didn’t think I was doing either that well.
“And also, it looks glamorous when you’re doing the national team stuff but really, when they go into camp, physically, it’s the most stressful experience they are ever exposed to. The training intensity is higher than they have ever done and the match intensity is higher than any normal week-to-week intensity.
#Officiel Mark Robertson 🏴 rejoint le staff sportif des « jaune et bleu » en tant que préparateur physique. #YellowArmy
👉https://t.co/UNcc42ANo2 pic.twitter.com/nI5mPK3U6t— ASM Rugby (@ASMOfficiel) April 30, 2019
“So all you’re trying to do in the gym is give them a low-risk stimulus that gives them a bit of a placebo that makes them think they are getting faster and stronger. But really you’re trying to minimise risk, maintain the levels of they have already got and manage that load to prevent injury as much as possible. You couldn’t really try things because the risk was too high.”
The attraction for Clermont in recruiting Robertson is obvious – they get a skilled operator who focuses on the sort of explosive footwork and high intensity fare that is becoming increasingly desirable in today’s game. “I’m really specialised in evasion and footwork, especially position-specific footwork – individuals using their strengths to manipulate and beat defenders. A lot of the footage I sent over to Clermont was based on drills and scenarios I’d created to develop those skills.
“Another part of my role is bringing players back from injury. So once they are through a specific stage with the physios, I’ll take them from being functional and gradually increase the load and the strength and speed to the point where they are able to be reintegrated with the team.
“They understand that because it’s such an attritional season. You can’t just be looking to get the biggest men because collisions inevitably mean injury when you have got so many of them. What they want to focus on is, can they play a higher speed, higher tempo game, that will enable them to make more use of overlaps, one-v-one opportunities, and score more tries through repeat high-intensity efforts? Can they keep the intensity of the game constantly higher than what it’s being played at?”
Intensity is Robertson’s bread and butter. Sevens, you sense, is his great love. It was his haven when a pelvic problem came perilously close to ending his career and it gave him the perfect vehicle to continue bettering himself.
The Scotland Sevens is a much slicker, more prolific operation these days than the one he joined in 2012. They’re World Series title winners now; they’re developing young talents again. But back in 2015, the squad were delivering too little. Scotland had lost its leg on the Series and the union gave its players a double-dose of reality.
“We sat in the changing room and heard some pretty tough things being said to us. But if you look back on it, it was completely justified, although I wouldn’t have said that at the time. How could you justify sending a group of players around the world who weren’t developing youngsters and also weren’t winning things? Things had to change. It’s hard to say that but it obviously sparked a reaction. When your lifestyle is threatened and your backs are against the wall, you have to change.”
In came Calum ‘Kitty’ MacRae and his strength and conditioning lieutenant Nick Lumley and that change was rapid. The squad got a hell of a lot fitter and suffered very few injuries. Players were given individual areas to improve and held accountable to their progress, the team worked on their weaknesses together and fostered a sense of trust in one another.
Really excited about the challenge ahead! Huge thanks to the team @Redskymanagemnt for continuing to provide new opportunities post-playing… Anybody got any advice on how to learn French in 8 weeks?! https://t.co/hj3RgeJRDg
— Mark Robertson (@marky_robertson) May 1, 2019
It’s no coincidence that Edinburgh have become more robust and meaner since Richard Cockerill added both MacRae and Lumley to his staff. “I remember really clearly, Kitty asked us in a meeting, ‘How do you feel about criticism?’ Everybody was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think we’ll deal well with it, we’ll point the finger, everybody will go into their shells and it’ll be negative’,” said Robertson.
“That’s the first thing he wanted us all to be clear on. He is intense, but the reason why we criticise is to bring about a solution and to become better. By identifying that first of all, all of a sudden guys started buying into it. The biggest thing is the stress the World Series puts on you psychologically, which is still a taboo subject in sport and doesn’t get confronted enough.
“You have to be emotionally consistent, like the All Blacks. That’s huge. The amount of times that you will watch some teams lose and they will be so pissed off that you will see a massive reaction and they will beat one of the best teams. But they will go on such an emotional high that they can’t sustain that for the next game and they will lose to someone four or five places below them.
“With Kitty, which some people won’t like, we took the emotion out of it completely. If we won a game, we just didn’t get very excited about it. We didn’t really celebrate. We had a look at the game, switched off, mucked about in the changing rooms, then came back in for the next game.
“Same thing if you lost, you’d be critical, hold each other accountable to mistakes, and move on. And honestly, we conserved so much energy, and it meant you weren’t on that emotional rollercoaster – I hated that rollercoaster.”
The culture came and the success followed. The pinnacle? Two glorious, thunderous days at Twickenham when Scotland won the title in London in 2016 and then defended it a year later. How many Scots have won at RFU HQ? How many have revelled on that vast patch of grass with a trophy above their heads?
“To be able to experience what we experienced, winning a World Series title at Twickenham for the first time, was absolutely ridiculous,” Robertson said. “We were a group of players who had never been past a cup quarter-final before, who then won two World Series titles, got to three finals and another semi-final.
“You don’t go into sevens for the money. Generally, the guys at the top of the Scotland set-up will be on £35k. There are guys who are third and fourth in their position in a XVs team in Scotland who will be on double that. We were going in there to become the best in the world on a given day and we wanted to achieve something nobody else had.
“When you look at the most decorated Scottish internationalists, a lot of them have never won anything, which is harsh, but they have never beaten the best in the world, never won a tournament. We’re very, very proud we have actually won a couple of tournaments, beaten New Zealand, beaten England on a number of occasions, beaten Fiji and South Africa. But we have got a lot to thank Kitty and Lummers [MacRae and Lumley] for because they created that change in the programme with the same group of players.”
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Comments on RugbyPass
After their 5/0 start, I had the Crusaders to finish Top 4 only…they lost the plot in Perth but will reload and back themselves vs 4th placed Rebels…
3 Go to commentsBoth nations missed a great opportunity to book a game that would have had a lot of interest from around the world. I understand these games can’t be organised in 5 minutes but they should have found a way to make it happen. I don’t think Wales are ducking anyone but it’s a bad look haha.
3 Go to commentsIt will be fascinating to see the effect that Jo Yapp has. If they can compete with Canada and give BFs a run for their money that will be progress
1 Go to commentsFollowing his dream and putting in the work. Go well young fella!
3 Go to commentsPerhaps filling Twickenham is one of Mitchell’s KPIs. I doubt whether both September matches will be at Twickenham on consecutive weekends. I would take the BF one to a large provincial stadium so as not to give them the advantage and experience of playing at Twickenham before a large crowd prior to the RWC.
2 Go to commentsvery unfortunate for Kitshoff, but big opportunity potentially for Nché to prove he is genuinely the best loosehead in the world, rather than just a specialist finisher. Presuming that if Kitshoff is out, it will also give Steenekamp a chance to come into the 23? Or are others likely to be ahead of him?
1 Go to commentsA long held question in popular culture asks if art imitates life or does the latter influence the former? Over this 6 nations I can ask the same question of the media influencing the thoughts of its audience or vice versa. Nobody wants to see cricket scores in rugby, as a spectacle it is not sustainable. With so many articles about England’s procession and lack of competition it feeds the epicaricacy of many looking for an opportunity to pounce. England are not the first team to dominate nor does it happen only in rugby, think Federer, Nadal, Red Bull or Mercedes, Manchester Utd, Australia in tests and World Cups. Instead of celebrating the achievements why find reasons to falsify it pointing towards larger playing pool, professional for a longer period or mitigate with the lack of growth in other nations. Can we not enjoy it while it is here and know that it won’t last for ever, others coveting what England have will soon take the crown, ask the aforementioned?
6 Go to commentsShame he won’t turn out for the Netherlands now they’re improving. U20s are Euro champs and in the U20 Trophy this year. The senior sides gets better every year too.
3 Go to commentsWill rugbypass tv be showing these games?
1 Go to commentsWell where do you start, the fact that England have a professional domestic league and Ireland’s is fully amatuer, that they have fully seperated professional squads at Fifteens and Sevens (7’s thinly disguised as GB), and Ireland have fully pro Sevens squad who loan some players back to the Semi-Professional Fifteens squad (moved from amateur for only a year or so) for a few games at 6N & RWC’s. The Women’s games is a shambles, and is at risk of killing itself by pushing for professionalism when the market isn’t really there to support it outside one or two countnries..
6 Go to commentsWayne Smith's input didn't have as much impact on the last final as Davison's red card for Thompson. England were 14 points up and flying when that happened.
6 Go to commentsBilly's been playing consistently well for 2 - 3 seasons now and deserves a look in at the top level. Ioane and ALB are still first choice but there needs to be injury cover and succession. His partnership with Jordie gives him first dibs you'd think. Go the Hurricanes.
3 Go to commentsIt’s not up to Wales to support Georgian Rugby. That’s up to International Rugby and Georgia. I sympathise with Georgia’s decent attempt to create this fixture. But for Wales the proposed match up is just a potential stick to beat them with and a potential big psychological blow that young Welsh team doesn’t need. (I’m Irish BTW.)
3 Go to commentsCale certainly looks great in space, but as you say, he has struggled in contact. At 23 years old, turning 24 this year, he should be close to full physical maturity and yet there exists a considerable gap in the power and physicality required for international rugby. Weight doesn’t automatically equate to power and physicality either. Can he go from a player who’s being physically dominated in Super rugby to physically dominating in international rugby in 1 or 2 years? That’s a big ask but he may end up being a late bloomer.
28 Go to commentsIf rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
24 Go to commentsSouth Africa rarely play Ireland and France on these tours. Mostly, England, Scotland and Wales. I wonder why
2 Go to commentsIt was a let’s-see-what-you're-made-of type of a game. The Bulls do look good when the opposition allows them to, but Munster shut them down, and they could not find a way through. Jake should be very worried about their chances in the competition.
2 Go to commentsHats off to Fabian for a very impressive journey to date. Is it as ‘uniquely unlikely’ as Rugby Pass suggests, given Anton Segner’s journey at the Blues?
3 Go to commentsSad that this was not confirmed. When administrators talk about expanding the game they evidently don’t include pathways to the top tier of rugby for teams outside of the old boys club. Rugby deserves better, and certainly Georgia does.
3 Go to commentsLions might take him on if they move on Van Rooyen but I doubt he will want to go back, might consider it a step backwards for himself. Sharks would take him on but if Plumtree goes on to win the challenge cup they will keep him on. Also sharks showing some promising signs recently. Stormers and Bulls are stable and Springboks are already filled up. Quality coach though, interesting to see where he ends up
1 Go to comments