In his first irbsevens.com column of 2010, eight-time IRB Sevens World Series-winning coach Gordon Tietjens assesses New Zealand's rocket-fuelled start to the new season and looks ahead to Wellington and Las Vegas with an enhanced squad.
I think a lot of people were a bit surprised by what we did in Dubai and George, including myself. We went over there and I thought that we were about 20 percent underdone compared with some of the other sides who had been playing a lot of rugby in other tournaments, and that meant that we had to change our gameplan a little bit.
Some of the games were very close but I think the guys showed a lot of character and came through with the two wins.
We've just had our national Sevens tournament here in New Zealand, which gave me an opportunity to see some new players and also monitor my guys. The conditions played a big part, it was six degrees on the first day and wet and poor too on the second day, and that really dictated the standard of play, but there was still a lot to take away from that tournament.
Nafi Tuitavake has come back into my wider squad of contracted players, in addition to Sherwin Stowers who played so well in Dubai and George, and Tim Mikkelson's also come back - he was outstanding for Waikato in the tournament and was the principle reason why they won it.
Youngsters putting their hands up
There are some younger guys too forcing their way into the squad now. Beauden Barrett, he's only 18 but he looks to have plenty of potential, he's going to have to prove that he can handle the big game situation but he certainly impressed me during the nationals.
Then there's Fritz Lee who's just become eligible for New Zealand. He's 21, he's a very very good forward, a big hitter, very impressed with him and I think you'll see a lot of him, his defence is outstanding and I think he's going to help strengthen our forward depth, which is an area we need to look at.
Overall I'm happy with the squad that I've contracted. I'll try and go outside that 16 too if I can throughout the season, but it gives me a good blend of experience and younger players.
I am still going to be reliant on my top four players - my captain DJ Forbes, Zar Lawrence, Lote Raikabula and Tomasi Cama - staying fit and really coming up with the goods time and again like they did before Christmas.
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There's no question that I am going to ask a lot of those players this season, but I know that they can handle that and crucially I know that they can handle the pressures of playing at home in Wellington because they've done it many times before.
I also know that I've got really good players around them. We've already seen how well Ben Souness played in Dubai and George, Paul Grant was strong when he played too and I'll now have Tim Mikkelson to potentially add into that mix in the forwards and backs too, plus Nafi who is back to take some of the pressure off Sherwin Stowers.
Fortress Wellington
I guess Stowers has been the stand-out of the season for us so far. He had played for me before, but lots of people have been talking about him and of course that express pace works wonders in Sevens. But this side is also about how the team works together and in DJ Forbes we have the right captain to bring that all together.
Wellington is going to be a massive challenge. It's our home patch, it's our home crowd. They expect us to win and up until the last 10 seconds of the final last year we were.
England beat us at the death when Damu went round us and Ben Gollings put over the conversion and that still eats away at the guys who were involved. You don't forget things like that, how you felt when that winning conversion went over for the wrong team, and in many ways I won't need to do much in terms of getting the guys up - for those who were there, remembering last year will be motivation enough.
We're now off to Mount Maunganui for a four-day camp. I'll be asking a lot of the players there in terms of fitness and commitment and I'm sure I'll get that because after that I'll be selecting my squad to compete not only at the NZI Sevens in Wellington, but also in Las Vegas the week later - and nobody wants to miss out on that..
