USA’s Mike Friday ready for one more spin of sevens’ roulette wheel

Ever since the Singapore leg of the HSBC SVNS 2024 series, a Sword of Damocles has hung over the heads of the US Eagles Men’s Sevens team and their larger-than-life head coach Mike Friday, who find themselves in the Madrid promotion-relegation shootout. 

This weekend we will discover the fate of one of the modern-day powerhouses of sevens rugby in Madrid, and how they will deal with the pressure of a do-or-die Spanish Sunday.

“We understand the situation and the circumstances we’re in. How we got here I’m at a loss, but we’ve accepted our fate,” he says.

Touching on Charlton Kerr extraordinarily denying Perry Baker what looked to be a certain winner in their key pool match against Great Britain, Friday acknowledged “We know Perry should have scored that try. Perry knows he should have scored that try. But Perry has won us countless games over the years and that was unfortunate.”

Also unfortunate is the fact that USA find themselves in this position despite making six out of seven quarter-finals. Only Ireland have reached more. 

Acknowledging the fine line SVNS teams tread, he added: “I don’t think there’s a competition in the world where 33 per cent of the top participants could be relegated – and certainly not all riding on one game.”

Intrigue

That’s not to say he doesn’t welcome an element of jeopardy, acknowledging it has added real intrigue to HSBC SVNS this season, rather than focus solely gazed at the top, but he describes the winner-takes-all Sunday format as, ‘roulette of the highest order’.

“A first kick off could go up, somebody misjudges something, you pick up a red card, go down to six and before you know it you’re 40 points down and it’s all gone. We need to maintain the jeopardy, however, and get it right.”

Turning attention to matters on the pitch, the steel that has hallmarked his career remains: “We’re a good team, we’re a confident team. The two weeks of training have gone well. This weekend we’re all business. We’re just coming here, we’re going to try and win every game, and get on with things.”

As a Series stalwart having coached England and Kenya prior to USA, his knowledge of the Challenger sides that lay in wait in Madrid is clear and insightful.

“I know Kenya inside out and they know me, and that’s not necessarily good, though, as they’ll raise their game! They’re an interesting outfit, they’ve got a lot of speed, I think they’ll be a handful”. In the same breath he’s acutely aware of the threat Patrick Odongo poses labelling him as, ‘proper quick… Moneta or Perry quick…’.

He goes on: “Uruguay and Chile have adopted the South American physical, confrontational style of play and it suits them. The Uruguayans caused a lot of problems on the Series last year and are very difficult to play against. They’re awkward.

“The Germans surprised a lot of people last week, I thought. They look very balanced, and you can see the influence of [coach] Pablo Feijoo playing with width, like Spain.”

“We won’t be taking any of them lightly. We’ll be paying them full respect. We need to get hold of the ball, control the ball, and starve them of it. All four of those teams are reliant on possession.”

USA bring a vastly experienced yet zesty outfit to Spain and have a fully healthy crew, bar Joe Schroeder, who’s recovering from a knee injury. 

Friday also has the feeling that, ‘where [they] are placed is not a true reflection of where USA are at as a team’ and points out that they’re trending on a similar trajectory to pre-2019 when they were Series front-runners before eventually being pipped by Fiji to the overall sevens crown.

For those new to the HSBC SVNS competition, drawn to this weekend by the impending drama and intrigue, Friday describes his men as: “An exciting team full of speed, full of footwork and are able to move the ball around quickly. We’re unpredictable in a good way and a bad way!”

End of several eras?

The wider picture of this season is the Olympic Games in Paris – and with it the pending, if not fully official, ending of some eras. 

Perry Baker, Madison Hughes and Kevon Williams may be about to don the stars and stripes for the last time, while long-time fans may have to get used to savouring the final days of bucket-hatted jack-in-the-box Friday animating the touchline.

He insists there’ll be no star-spangled Cordovan hat on show this weekend, but maybe it’s us who should suitably equipped to doff our caps at one of the great men of sevens as he goes into battle again, this time to preserve USA’s top-flight status.

When the role of head honcho for USA 7s was first tabled to Friday back in 2015, it came with a tossed gauntlet from the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (US OPC) that they “stood less a than 10 percent chance of making the Olympic Games”.

That was the challenge and the odds a scrapper like him simply couldn’t resist.

USA have been to two Olympics and nearly won a World Series since, so who better to stack ’em high and spin the Spanish wheel, in USA’s determined quest to leave the sevens' roulette table having taken on the house and won?