New era of sevens sisters ready to do it for themselves

When sevens became an Olympic sport, it also effectively became a four-year cycle sport. Players, coaches and the game itself regenerates after each showpiece event is marked off the calendar and another quadrennial period lies ahead. 

The start of the 2025 HSBC SVNS season in Dubai this week marks the biggest shift and most significant change in the women’s game since the competition’s inception in 2012.

Portia Woodman-Wickliffe, Tyla King, Naya Tapper, Chloe Pelle and Sharni Smale, players we watched grow into legends of the game, are gone. 

Lauren Doyle, Dom du Toit and Lucy Mulhall are among others to have moved on to a new stage of their lives and even David Courteix, the French coach for the best part of 15 years, has taken his leave.

A handful of stars are staying on: Sarah Hirini and Charlotte Caslick just keep going and Racquel Kochhann’s mohawk will be on full display once more. 

Tim Walsh and Cory Sweeney will still prowl the sidelines and an array of players who became regulars in the past cycle will now be key figures in their sides – the sophomore class if you like, ready to graduate. 

But things are going to look different this year, so here’s a primer to help you through.

Every team will bring debutantes to Dubai and Cape Town, blooding new players as they regenerate their squads. 

Who gets up to speed and which squad’s new faces adapt the quickest over the opening two tournaments will go a long way in setting up the season – a quick getaway could be key to winning the overall title.

The four Olympic semi-finalists give us a good snapshot of how different teams will appear at the start of the season. 

New Zealand arrive in Dubai without Stacey Waaka and Michaela Blyde; Australia is unlikely to see a couple of recent stars like Maddie Ashby and Alysia Lefau-Fakaosilea as the effects of their horror injury toll continues.

Just four of Canada’s silver medalists will play the opening two tournaments, while USA’s Sammy Sullivan and Spiff Sedrick have had off-season surgery and Ilona Maher has cha-cha-cha’d her way to a different kind of final for USA. 

Coaching evolution

The most significant change, however, will be on the sidelines, where a massive shift has taken place in more ways than one. 

There are five new head coaches, four of whom are women. 

At the start of the last Olympic cycle in late 2021, USA’s Emilie Bydwell was the only female head coach. She was joined by Spain’s Maria Ribera last season. 

For all the progress women’s sport has made in the past five years, the lack of opportunities for women in high-performance coaching has been a problem, so for HSBC SVNS to now have six out of 12 women’s teams coached by women is a massive step.  

Canada’s Jocelyn Barrieau and Japan’s Yuka Kanematsu move up from assistant coaching roles; New Zealander Crystal Kaua has taken over Brazil, and veteran mentor Giselle Mather is now in charge of Great Britain.  

Elsewhere, there has been a turnaround in male coaches. Romain Huet replaces Courteix as the new head of France, while regular assistant Timoci Volavola will look after Fijiana on an interim basis. Lu Zhaun returns with China as they return to the HSBC SVNS. 

Squad management for coaches new and old will be a critical factor. 

Looming over the season is Rugby World Cup 2025 in England. Players from nearly every nation have expressed a desire to take on or return to the challenge of the fifteens game. Only China will be unaffected, as players juggle their own goals and that of two programmes in the new year. 

Canada has led the way in its ‘one squad’ philosophy, with players crossing back and forth over the past season. New Zealand and France have the playing depth and experience to manage the issue and Ireland have done a good job integrating their sevens players into fifteens of late. 

It would be a new challenge for Australia and, to a degree, USA to handle if the noises their players and unions are making about Rugby World Cup 2025 come to fruition. 

Old certainties

But, as always, the more things change the more they stay the same. 

New Zealand and Australia will again start the HSBC SVNS Series as favourites, despite retirements and injury absences. Canada, USA and France will lead the chasing pack, while Ireland and GB will continue to search for the consistency that would make them week-in-week-out contenders. 

But the 2025 season also comes with a lot more questions and unknowns than in previous years and indeed previous four-year cycles: 

Will Canada and USA wear those Olympic medals lightly or will their new-found status inhibit them? How do Australia and France shake off the demons of Paris? Can Ireland show their Perth heroics last season not merely a one-off? Which of the new coaches can make the biggest immediate mark?

There’s a beauty to the cyclical nature of sport that marries perfectly with the chaos of sevens given its unpredictability, constant questions and unfolding story lines. 

In Dubai, we begin seven months of sevens to find some answers.