Tom Mitchell
“I had those thoughts for sure and, I suspect a few of the other guys did as well, thinking ‘what am I hanging around for? The universe is telling me to move on to pastures new’. But no one’s really seen that as an option.”
Four years on and Tom Mitchell still can’t believe the Olympics happened. Not just happened, but that he’d been part of it, as captain of a Great Britain side that won a silver medal. “I’m not trying to romanticise it but I still can’t quite grasp that experience and that it actually became a reality,” he admits. “I’ve even got the rings tattooed and still can’t quite believe it.”
It wasn’t just being at the Olympics that made the event seem surreal, it was also who he was with. “You only see those people on TV and it always seemed like such a distant dream that when I actually ended up in Rio in a laundry line with Andy Murray, and he’s carrying his laundry bag, and then you’re in the food queue with Mo Farah… It was just so surreal then and it still feels surreal now, even though I know those things happened. I haven’t made those things up, it was all real.”
What’s perhaps more surreal has been the events of the past few months, ones that threatened the final chance 31-year-old Tom had of going one better at the world’s greatest sporting event.
As captain of England, and favourite to take on the role for Great Britain too at Tokyo earlier this year, Tom would have been at the forefront of any knowledge filtering through to the squad during lockdown. “When we found out in August it was very much, ‘well, the programme is going to come to an end and people whose contracts are finishing will finish, and people whose contracts end next year will be made redundant’, and that happened.
“We thought there was some sort of connecting up between next August and now, there needed to be something mapped out, and then it became a clean break without that mapping taking place.”
At the end of the Zoom call with Conor O’Shea, when the players clicked ‘end’, it was more than just the closure of the virtual meeting. “The thing that felt at odds was we had that thing that was still there [the Olympics] and all the players, whether we were naïve thinking there was something that was going to be carried on, I think everyone thought there would be some level of connection with the sevens.”
No plan was offered for the future, and very little hope. “There was nothing, it was literally that’s it, we’re done, we’ll see what happens in the future I guess,” he says. “Since then, there’s been a few conversations with the RFU but sevens is and always has been down the priority list. In the offices at the RFU they’re very worried about sorting out the fifteens game and, to a certain extent, rightly so because that’s where the money comes in to the organisation.
“I think they felt they didn’t need to worry about sevens for a while because there weren’t any tournaments, so they put it on the back burner, but it felt like, ‘we’ll just get rid of it for now’.
“Now, as a group of players we’ve come together and rallied round and stayed connected and there is a sevens squad and a sevens entity that is still there and thriving and strong and operating to various degrees. There’s still a group of us that meet up and train when we can, we’re still getting supported by the same S&C coach and they’re doing that off their own back.
“It could well have been different,” he admits, “people could have moved on to other things because of the uncertainty – there was no promise of anything in the future, no guarantees that there would be any sevens even if World Rugby say there is, even the Olympics, that’s not a certainty. People could have gone off and done their own thing and then there’d have been no sevens team to rebuild.”
Tom says, even before they joined together for the Save our Sevens campaign, the men’s and women’s sides were slowly aligning, with both sides based out of Lensbury and a growing number of combined events on the World Series circuit. “There is alignment there but not for everything we do,” explains Tom. “We’ve seen in the sevens there’s a degree of inequality at the top level and we see that as part of our opportunity now, for there to be something new that can remove that inequality and promote the women’s game in a way that hasn’t been done before.”
There are other marked differences between the two sets of players though. “The women’s squad is much younger, more fresh-faced than we are,” he says, “there are a few of us in the men’s who are older and were probably thinking about moving on from the squad.
“But that decision to move away was made for us – at this point anyway. I had those thoughts for sure and I suspect a few of the other guys did as well, thinking ‘what am I hanging around for? The universe is telling me to move on to pastures new’.
“Actually, no one’s really seen that as their option, no one’s made the clean break. People have gone on to do various things, Phil Burgess has gone onto Cranleigh School, a couple of others are doing teaching assistant roles in their old schools, Mike Ellery has been doing oil brokering in the City, others were full-time re-habbers, others are doing coaching, keeping a positive hand in the sevens.
“I’m doing some bits with a non-alcoholic beer company, delivering some corporate workshops, but the guys are keeping themselves busy, it’s difficult. Even with the guys that have gone into proper jobs, Phil’s for example, he’s had to have the conversation around, ‘I still want to go to the Olympics’.
“People have been talking about the transition out of rugby, but it’s not really an extended transition, it’s an extended pause, at least that’s what we’re hoping for the younger guys, us older guys have at least considered what could be next, but some of the younger guys would have been blindsided – they’re expecting to play rugby for another six or seven years, whatever.
“We’ve not had the numbers dive into the fifteens game that would have been beneficial for the younger guys to play, but there are a lot of barriers to that. I was in two minds as to whether that was the best thing for me to do, particularly as I’d had a break from full time training.
“It wasn’t an easy market to get into,” he admits, “it wasn’t like the phone was ringing off the hook with offers.”
The time out has given Tom and his colleagues the time to consider sevens’ future as a whole, even beyond. As it stands, when the World Series resumes in whatever form, the RFU can enter a Great Britain team which would give the side some chance to prepare for Tokyo in July next year. “What has underpinned our desire to deliver for the Olympics next year is to give the sport a strong future and inspire future generations to take it up and keeps sevens as a sport that people enjoy watching and adds value to the global sporting calendar and rugby.”
The group are thinking about the sport’s existence, and infrastructure. “What structure can we put in place, what arrangements, agreements we have in place that secures this [future], not just secures, but takes it to the next level.
“I think there have been opportunities missed with the game in this country,” he continues. “Number one is the road to Tokyo, but for some of us we’re thinking about how we set something up that has longevity.”
A split from the governing body? “I don’t think in the short term the intention is to be separate from the RFU,” he states, “the thing with sevens is that it’s not just the RFU, there’s the World Rugby thing too. There have been questions as to whether World Rugby should run the sevens’ series in the same way that you might question whether the RFU should run various competitions in this country – are World Rugby best placed to run it?
“I know in the past there have been alternatives put on the table and maybe that is something that comes forward: something involving international teams or franchises, that don’t come under the union banner.
“Part of the conversation is around this,” he continues. “I didn’t have a full appreciation of it all, and probably still don’t, and ultimately the commercial viability of the game will dictate whether it will survive in tough times like this.”
If it does survive, this group of players are keen to be in a position to shape it, as Tom talks of ways to take the game to new audiences, to bring younger people into it – ‘eight, nine, ten-year-olds’. “How do we set something up that’s going to be an amazing experience, with big crowds?” he asks.
For other nations in the Great Britain set-up there are different objectives. “Scotland’s argument for wanting to hang on to their sevens programme, is a similar thing to the women,” he says, “they have fewer outlets, only two professional clubs, so the sevens was an outlet for professional players to play at a high level and they used it openly, with the sevens bolstering the fifteens.”
Sevens should be seen as a sport out on its own, says Tom. “I think it should be seen as an elite game in its own right,” he says. “We don’t have to pigeon-hole it.
“I’m a little fatigued with the argument that sevens is just a development sport and, while I say that, and I’m trying to push it as an elite spectacle that can stand on its own, equally I recognise that it is a high-demand sport both in terms of skill set and athleticism so inevitably you’re going to improve from playing it and if that then means that you’re going on to fifteens as a better player then that’s great.”
There’s been little communication between Tom and his fellow international captains from the circuit, and he fears that with so many players trying to find their own way through the post-lockdown world (or just lockdown, depending on where you are in the world), the product is already under threat. The lack of connection with other sevens players has made Tom even more aware of problems within the sport. “If I’m being really honest and openly critical of myself and as an England group, we’ve probably enjoyed some good times over the years and not fully recognised that there are other teams out there that were making these tournaments but weren’t well supported.
“They weren’t being paid the money they should have been,” he says. “Look at the contractual issues Kenya had, Wales have had a pretty tough time of it, Canada too. And while we show solidarity to one another privately, if I had my time again – when there wasn’t a pandemic to worry about as well – we should have taken a stand and said ‘look World Rugby, you need to make sure there’s better equality or at least a better base level’.
“Even the Fiji guys, some of the best players in the world, there were stories of them not getting paid. Is there a model that rugby can establish where sponsors and brands and the commercial entities can buy into without there being a disregard for the welfare of players?
“I don’t mean that just on the pitch, I mean were World Rugby aware of how much players were being paid, how much was being asked of them by their unions? It’s a genuinely open question and I would love to know what their approach would be with it moving forward.
“Is it best to have centralised control? Does it ensure the best thing for the players and allow us to drive forward as we want to?
“I’m not sure,” he admits. “I’m saying all these things and I’m well aware of my own bias, that this has been my professional game but then, in some ways, that’s makes me well-placed to say these things.”
Until now, Tom has given little thought about governance. “I really beat myself up over it,” he says. “While my job was to play now, when you end up in this situation, you have a vested interest into how the sport is run. If it’s not being run well and it goes tits up, then it’s your job you’re going to lose at the end of it regardless of how well you’re playing.”
His own plans had initially been to play fifteens after Tokyo – something he’s not done at any level since competing in the Varsity Match for Oxford University back in 2011. “That’s still the aim, it’s just delayed a year and that will be good for some and not for others.
“The only thing that might have kept guys going was the lure of Commonwealth Games in Birmingham 2022, but to be at home games, would be unreal.
“Even as I’m talking about it now, I’m wondering if I can stick around for that – we’ll see if I can, some of these things aren’t in our hands, are they?”
Story by Alex Mead
Pictures by Oli Hillyer-Riley