John is preparing to lead Australia into the HSBC Sevens World Series for the first time since leaving a similar role with Canada in May. And this season the prize at stake is bigger than ever before with the top four teams at the end of the Series gaining automatic qualification for Rio 2016.
John steered Canada to a best-ever sixth place finish in 2013/14 – one below Australia, who host the first leg of the Series on the Gold Coast this weekend. Winning on home soil would provide Australia with the perfect launch pad to go one better than last year.
Pressure
But John insists the end-goal must not cloud their immediate focus. “You’ve got to be careful because everyone is talking about the Olympics, everyone is talking about qualification and everyone is talking about the pressure that is on this year’s tournaments,” he said. “We’ve tried to focus on what we can do and what we can control,"
He added: “Now the players are in a centralised programme we’ve been able to put a more structured (fitness) programme around them, which maybe hasn’t happened in the past, And, in the last eight to nine weeks especially, we’ve been working constantly on our skills and the key elements of our game that we feel we need to improve on to achieve success on the field.
“Clearly the more success you have on the field the more points you gain, and hopefully by the end of the year we will be in the top four. The time to start talking about that though is at the end of May; we’re not there yet, as I keep telling people. Our focus has to be on what we can do on a day-to-day basis.”
Friends reunited
John has been with the Australian set up for the past four months, but a little bit of his heart – along with his family – remains in Canada. “It was a difficult decision to make to leave Canada,” he said. “I have a lot of fond memories from the nine years I spent there. I built up a lot of good relationships with the players and the staff, we had a close community and socialised together away from rugby, and for the time being my wife still lives in Canada.
“It was good to see the players arrive in Australia for the Series and to get a few welcome hugs off them. For me it was quite nice to have because the Commonwealth Games (his first competition in charge of Australia) was a little bit awkward because it came about not long after I'd left Canada. Hopefully time has been a bit of a healer and they’ll remember what we achieved together.”
While missing his friends from back home, the Welshman has seamlessly settled into his new role. “The transition has been really good to be honest,” he said. “The players, the staff and the Australian Rugby Union have all been very welcoming."
Winning culture
John has named a strong squad for the Series curtain-raiser and he knows that home supporters will expect nothing less than a winning start to his reign. The host nation take on Portugal, Scotland and Fiji in Pool C, with the top two sides in each group progressing to Sunday’s Cup quarter-finals.
“The whole thing about Australian sport is they expect their teams to win, the second expectation is that you’ve got to beat New Zealand,” he said. “It was slightly different in Canada where, if you finished top four or even top six you’d get people tapping you on the back and congratulating you for being successful.
“I believe that you’ve always got to be number one. It puts you under different pressure as a coach but it is fun, though.”
