Thursday 5th April 2007
NEC Harlequins youngsters Charlie Amesbury and Danny Care are currently 12,000 miles away in Australia with the England Sevens squad but they are far from being on holiday. The duo played alongside fellow Quin Tom Williams last weekend in the Hong Kong Sevens, where England were unable to claim their fifth successive title after losing to New Zealand in the quarter finals.
It was the first time either of the players had been to the world’s most famous sevens tournament and both were impressed by the occasion. Charlie says, “It is a fantastic place to play rugby and the whole experience was unbelievable. The atmosphere is amazing but there is no describing how disappointed we were with our performance. England have such a strong and successful record at the tournament that it was horrible to lose in the quarters. I think we went into our shells a bit and just didn’t perform against New Zealand. We started badly and before we knew it they were 21 0 up and we were struggling to play catch up.”
Danny echoes his Quins and England team mate’s thoughts, “It is an amazing tournament and nothing like I have ever experienced before. Losing to the kiwis was such a gutting way to end our tournament. There was a lot of pressure on us to perform well as everywhere we went people were talking about the ‘five in a row’ and whether we could win again. In a way there was more pressure on those of us who hadn’t played there before as we knew what others before us had achieved. But there are no excuses with that final game – New Zealand deserved to win and played better than us.”
The players have now travelled down to Adelaide ahead of this weekend’s IRB Australia Sevens. Neither has been to Adelaide before and are impressed by what they have seen. Charlie says, “We only arrived on Tuesday and have been training ever since but it is obvious already that everyone in this town is sports mad. The sports facilities at the school where we are training are amazing and whilst Aussie Rules is definitely the number one sport in Adelaide they are still expecting over 20,000 people to come to the rugby this weekend.”
England face a tough pool with Tonga, Canada and Fiji on Saturday. The tournament is being staged at the Adelaide Oval – the city’s cricket ground. Danny is looking forward to it, “We went on a recce to the stadium today and its very impressive. It is big and open and as a cricket ground it is pretty hard in the centre. We play our first match (against Tonga) at midday on Saturday so will have to play in the midday sun as well. We have so much to put right from the wrongs of last weekend and everyone is really excited about playing.”
Charlie adds, “We have had a good look at what went wrong last weekend and have changed quite a lot in training. We need to be more positive on the pitch and believe in ourselves. It would be fantastic to win here and after the disappointment of last weekend that is all everyone is focusing on.”
Stay up to date with the England Sevens squad’s progress at rfu.com/sevens
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