Australian women’s rugby sevens team’s left-field approach to handling Olympics atmosphere
In short:
Under coach Tim Walsh, Australia’s women’s rugby sevens team have a history of operating outside the box.
Walsh’s latest scheme, ahead of next month’s Paris Olympic campaign, involved training with a soundtrack of crowds jeering.
What’s next?
Australia are reigning world champions, but face Ireland and Great Britain in their Olympic Games pool.
The latest on a long list of “lame activities” will have Charlotte Caslick and her teammates ready when they can’t hear each other above the 80,000 screaming Stade de France spectators.
Under coach Tim Walsh, Australia’s women’s rugby sevens team have a history of operating outside the box.
Walsh’s latest scheme, ahead of next month’s Paris Olympic campaign, caught the side off guard.
Sent an audio file and asked to wear headgear over ear buds to training, players were then told to hit “play” on their device.
They copped raucous cheers, boos and even personalised sledges recorded by staff, so loud that the Rio 2016 champions couldn’t hear a thing.
“You’ve always got to study your environment and find out what’s going to be different,” Walsh told AAP before the team flew to their Montpellier pre-Games base on Tuesday.
“We pride ourselves on being adaptive, but it’s nice to be really prepared.
“And at the Olympics — the Stade de France with 70,000, 80,000 people — you probably won’t be able to hear anything.
“So it’s about reading each other’s movements, hand signals on calls, understanding what they’ll do before they do it.
“And they were actually pretty good; it didn’t look like they couldn’t hear, which was a positive.”
Walsh coached the side to gold in Rio before switching to the men’s role for the Tokyo Games, then reverting again to the women’s program in 2022.
Mainstays Caslick and Sharni Smale — the only regular headgear wearer — have been there for every Walsh twist and turn.
“We usually call them ‘lame activities’ because we always say that they’re going to be really lame,” Caslick told AAP.
“But then once we get there, we have the best time.”
Walsh had Caslick pretend to be injured before one session, and they’ve played a lot of poker this year to fit with a theme of “all-in”.
They have abseiled in Cape Town, skydived in Wollongong and woken at 3am to hike in Orange.
“Yeah, he’s done a lot of weird things, a lot of wild stuff,” Caslick confirmed.
“Poker’s been really fun … we’re hoping that no one’s developed a gambling addiction.”
Walsh admits there is a risk of overdoing it.
“Yeah, so you just don’t do it for a long time … but you don’t have to,” he said.
“One year I asked Charlotte to pretend to be injured and she put on this ridiculous performance, I thought she really was.
“But this year we had injuries, two big ones (to Madison Ashby and Lily Dick that ruled them out of the Games).
“It was quite traumatic and we handled it really well. We didn’t have to simulate that; it’d already happened.”
Walsh’s team are reigning world champions and fierce rivals with Tokyo gold medallists New Zealand, their running battle igniting at the sport’s Rio Games debut.
But there are dangers elsewhere — Ireland and Great Britain are in Australia’s pool and have beaten them this season — and the hosts have also recently beaten New Zealand.
“It’s one of those epic rivalries that hopefully they’ll talk about for a long time, but there’s so many that can win it,” Walsh said.
“The Olympics, it’s on every four years and is the one you want.
“It’s about trying to normalise it and block out those discussions.
“Managing that’s a challenge, but a fun one.”
AAP
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