It’s little surprise that GB Rugby Sevens have pounced on Giselle Mather to be their new head coach.
Ever since she was sacked from her post as DoR of Trailfinders, you could imagine queues of people at her front-door begging her to take on a top job.
The appointment she has accepted is one of the trickier in the world of women’s rugby. The whole structure is complex: three unions, the RFU, SRU and WRU have to agree on a common policy, work out how much money is in the kitty and how it should be apportioned.
We need only look at the constant changes of staff since GB 7s’ baptism in 2015-16 to see the problems involved. And they have been mirrored by even faster changes in playing membership.
The consequence has been a fall-away in results: two successive fourth places at the Rio and Tokyo Olympics (the most frustrating result of all) to a seventh place in Paris. And the men’s team didn’t even qualify.
Some of the errors made at the Stade de France call into question the quality of the coaching; they could seem very basic. It’s an irony that Ciaran Beattie is now labelled “GB7s director of rugby”. He was in charge of an up-and-down performance at the Olympics. Now he appears to be Mather’s boss.
A new regime
It’s comforting to see that the Trailfinders squad Mather assembled contained a number of GB players: Abi Burton, Amy Wilson Hardy, Ellie Boatman, Emma Uren (captain) and Lisa Thomson, plus Ellie Kildunne and Meg Jones, who played under her at Wasps.
But refining a new squad will be no easier than before. The GB management has to discover which players are willing to throw their hat into the ring, then ensure the respective unions are willing to let them go. The HSBC World Series goes its own way, with little or no consideration for other rugby tournaments happening around the globe.
For Mather it will be like the transition national head coaches have to make after being used to the regular sessions with a club side. The HSBC schedule spreads across months, with large gaps between tournaments. At least her varied past experience means this won’t be such a shock to the system.
In my view the GB 7s management should be undertaking a thorough review of past practices, to avoid the constant changes of staff and players that has characterised the last seven years. Building a programme that suits all the players can’t be easy.
This will be the first time a woman has taken charge of proceedings. There’s little time to lose: the new show kicks off on 30 November in Dubai.
