England, Scotland and Wales will look to build on their Olympic success by joining forces once again to form men’s and women’s Great Britain Sevens teams ahead of the 2023 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.
Rugby 7s teams
England, Scotland and Wales will look to build on their Olympic success by joining forces once again to form men’s and women’s Great Britain Sevens teams ahead of the 2023 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series. England rugby sevens captains Abbie Brown, Megan Jones and Tom Mitchell will be hoping to lead their teams to Olympic glory in Paris 2024.
Both GB teams have performed strongly since the introduction of rugby sevens to the Games, with the men securing silver in Rio 2016 and fourth in Tokyo 2020 Olympics while the women finished fourth on both occasions.
This move, which has been ratified and mandated by World Rugby, aims to align the governing bodies’ future direction in the sport and progress the performance capabilities further by competing together consistently on the World Series stage.
The mandating of Olympic teams from the 2023/24 season means all three unions acknowledge the importance of transferring to GB from the forthcoming campaign (2022/23) to embrace this new era in the World Series moving forward.
Rugby 7s Olympic team
RFU performance director Conor O’Shea said: “A huge amount of work has gone on behind the scenes to get to this stage and I would like to thank our colleagues at Scottish Rugby and the Welsh Rugby Union along with Nigel Cass (competitions director at World Rugby) for their collaboration.
“This is a seminal day for sevens, it is the right way forward, giving Team GB a real opportunity to go to the Olympic games with the right preparation, to compete on a level playing field with other sevens programmes and most importantly enables us all to give certainty to staff and players as to the future of the programme.
“We will be working hard now to finalise the structures to support GB so we are ready to start the 2023 World Rugby Sevens Series with a bang moving towards Paris 2024 and beyond.”
Each union will still be able to utilise sevens for player and coach development in their bespoke ways, retaining their Commonwealth Games and Rugby World Cup status if qualified.
The respective unions and World Rugby are also in discussions regarding further playing opportunities for the England, Scotland and Wales teams.
Scottish Rugby’s director of high performance Jim Mallinder said: “We are acutely aware of Scotland’s heritage and passion for sevens rugby. As such we remain fully committed to a Scotland 7s programme to develop our players and coaches.
“The move to a GB Sevens team on the World Series will give Scottish players, both men and women, a unique opportunity to represent and compete on the largest global stage through the World Series and Olympic Games. It is an exciting development and one we intend to play a full part in.”
The coaches and playing squads have not yet been confirmed ahead of the World Series kicking off in Hong Kong for the men (4-6 November 2022) and Dubai (2-3 December 2022) for the women which will be the teams’ maiden tournaments.
WRU performance director Nigel Walker added: “This is a real opportunity for Welsh players to reach an Olympic Games.
“We will maintain male and female sevens programmes in Wales to develop players and coaches and make sure there is a pipeline of talent culminating in the opportunity to push for GB selection and ultimately compete at an Olympics.”