Mike Friday

Seven years ago, having taken Kenya to fifth in the world, Mike Friday was set to step away from rugby. The politics were too much and he’d had enough. Only a call from a former Wasp changed his mind and he ended up starting an American revolution.

When Mike Friday left his England sevens role in 2006, few would have imagined a man so intrinsically linked to the abridged version of the game for his entire career would have waited a further seven years before returning to the international stage. 

During his sabbatical, his only roles of note had been that of director of rugby of Blackheath in National 1 and attack coach at London Welsh with fellow sevens’ stalwart and close friend Phil Greening, which lasted a season. 

A year after his role with the Championship club ended, Mike found himself coaching in Sri Lanka the Carlton Super 7s, an international invitational event where coaches and players were drafted to core teams. Coaching the Jaffna Challengers, Mike took the title, with his return to the game catching the eye of Rugby Kenya in the process. 

He flew to Nairobi to discuss the role and came face to face with journalists and television crews at his hotel, all hailing him as the new Kenya Sevens coach.

Premature admittedly, but, in the end, they were proven right, as Mike accepted the job and duly led them to their highest ever finish on the World Sevens Series.  “The thing about the Kenyan boys is that they have an amazing work ethic, they’re phenomenal athletically, but they just needed direction on their conditioning,” explains Mike. “They had all been taught how to pass wrong, so we had to unteach them and teach them again and then we just had to get them to understand the basic framework, so understanding how space works in attack and in defence.

“By the time we arrived at Gold Coast for the first event, we had made machines of men. They had become far more adept at moving the ball around efficiently and effectively. Not as well as the top teams, but far better than before. When we went out for our first warm-up, we made them all wear their vests [to show off their physique].

“Literally everyone from New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, they all turned and saw these beasts of men running past. You could see them thinking: ‘shit’.”

His sole campaign with the Shujaa had only enhanced his reputation further, as they reached five cup semi-finals from nine legs of the World Series [one of which resulted in a final in Wellington, which they lost 24-19 to England] to finish fifth. Significantly, they were seven points clear of England in sixth place.

That year came to an end in London, Mike’s Kenya finishing fourth overall, beaten in the bronze medal game by England 26-19 at Twickenham. Lethal finisher William Ambaka was promptly named in that season’s dream team. However, it was in the boardroom where Mike faced most of his problems with the lobbying of the Kenya Rugby Union board taking its toll on the Englishman.

“It was hard to say goodbye,” Mike admits. “But I had to, for my health more than anything. Unfortunately, in the boardroom they are cannibals. I was waking up day after day to 60, 70 emails off half of the board trying to upset the other half of the board and using the white kid in the middle. It was relentless and I had fought it for so long and kept the boys shielded, but after the World Cup was done, I think I would have gotten ill.

“To give an example, we had just beaten New Zealand in Wellington [to play England in the final on the World Series], we were getting ready for the final and I am getting harangued by a couple of directors about things that are nothing to do with rugby. They were just trying to points score. 

“It was like; ‘what is going on here?’. That was the Achilles heel of Kenya and, with all due respect, remains the Achilles heel of Kenya.”

Meanwhile, just as Mike’s time with Kenya was coming to an end, Ben Ryan had also decided to step down from his role as head coach of England’s Sevens programme. He’d held the role for six years, ironically taking over from Mike in 2007, who himself had held the role for three years. 

Despite having left the England job in far from ideal circumstances, the former Wasps scrum-half fancied a return to his home country. He knew his chances were slim though, given it was a fall-out with Rob Andrew, the RFU director of elite rugby, that had had been the catalyst to his initial departure. 

In the early years of the England Rugby sevens programme, Joe Lydon had established relationships with professional sides up and down the country, helping enable the release of players to the sevens team. Those selected were largely young players, with sevens used as a way to develop their skills and play a high standard, instead of watching on from the stands as the 23rd man on a Saturday afternoon. “Rob Andrew had just come in and I just felt that my values were being compromised,” explains Mike. “All of a sudden the RFU weren’t backing the fact that a 23-year-old shouldn’t be holding a pad. As a person, I had a choice to piss or get off the pot and I didn’t want to be a part of that because I am not going to look a 23-year-old in the eye and say that it is better for you to go to your club and hold a pad, instead of coming to Dubai and playing.

“As much as I am hugely patriotic, I didn’t agree with the leadership and what Rob was doing. I went back to the City and into property.”

Emphasising the small world that is sevens rugby, the man tasked with the interview process this time around was Lydon – who was now back with the RFU as the head of international player development. Not only had Mike succeeded him as head coach first-time around, but he also served him as assistant coach for three years beforehand.

Lydon had asked him to throw his hat into the ring, even if he wasn’t sure if the governing body would want him back, six years after his last departure.

“Joe had come in and said that he wanted me to come back and do it,” he says. “All of a sudden, because I think Rob Andrew was still there, RFU politics started to manipulate and work. I said to Joe; ‘He isn’t going to want me back there, I am not an RFU man, I don’t toe the line with that’, as I do what is right in my view.”

As you’d expect, he reached the final two, where it was a straight choice between himself and another former Wasps scrum-half and England sevens captain [not to mention, friend], Simon Amor.

“Joe came to me and said; ‘I don’t think you can take us to where we want to go’,” explains Mike. “I looked at him and said: ‘You what? What a load of horse shit, this is to do with politics’. He then said that they were going to go with Simon, so they had gone for the person I had mentored as a player and as a coach, but who hadn’t got the history with Rob Andrew. Joe wasn’t prepared to stand his ground. 

“I remember him looking at me and, I’ll be honest, I lost a lot of respect for Joe then. I told him all this at the start and we could have had a straight conversation, he hadn’t fronted up and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Joe and I had been through a lot, but for me there is a moral part here, that if you are friends with people, you have direct, straight conversations with people even if they are tough ones. You don’t do that bullshit.

“I spoke to Simon the next day and he was saying how he didn’t know and I just said to crack on and do the best he could do and I’d be there for him and he needed to do what he needed to do.

“He hasn’t looked back since to be fair to him.”

Such was the impact on him, Mike was ready to leave the sport altogether and follow the well-trodden path to a job in the City but, in-keeping with the merry-go-round narrative, he then took a call from a third Wasp in this story – Kenny Logan. Then a board member at London Scottish, he was looking for a replacement director of rugby, having just lost a certain Simon Amor to England.  “Kenny phoned me and asked what I was doing,” explains Mike. “I said I was done with rugby. This one had hurt me too much. Kenny kept asking and said they were not letting Simon go until I did it. So, I said I would do it for two or three months to let Simon go start his new job.”

Joining London Scottish in the September of 2013, after ten months Mike signed on as Director of Rugby in West London. “I ended up staying to finish the season,” he explains. “I ended up staying because I did all of the player recruitment and there were some really lovely guys that were just genuine, good, honest rugby guys and that kind of restored a little bit of faith in me that there are some good people in the game.”

Enter a fourth Wasp and the third former scrum-half, Nigel Melville. He’d coached Mike during his playing days and in his then role as USA Rugby CEO and president of rugby operations, was looking for someone to take the helm of the USA Sevens operations. “Nigel phoned me and, he was like, ‘you have got to come’,” recalls Mike. “The thing is with Nigel, when we were player and DoR, Nigel would always talk as though you were doing something [before you agreed to it]. I was saying that I didn’t know that I wanted to, but from the way he talked, it was as though I was already doing it.”

The goal for Mike was qualification for the Olympics in Rio, which was a far more straight-forward task than some thought. “The way he framed it to me was that the USOPC (Unites States Olympic & Paralympic Committee), who do all of our statistical analysis, had said they had a less than ten per cent chance of qualifying. 

“They were in a regional qualifier, so all they had to do was beat Canada. He just said that was what he had been told, so he had to get someone who knew what they were on about. So, he had come to me.”

His new home was Chula Vista and no sooner had he touched down at San Diego International Airport, he went straight to his new workplace where 70 players were ready and waiting to try-out in front of the new programme lead, in an attempt to become a professional rugby player. In addition to the carrot of the Olympics, Mike also had fifteen full-time contracts to hand out, so places were few and far between.

It was there and then that Perry Baker was found. Having left his NFL dreams behind in 2011 following a knee injury while on the books of the Philadelphia Eagles, Perry had returned to rugby, a sport he had played as a teenager.

Mike then set about bringing back the original USA speedster Carlin Isles, who had been with Glasgow Warriors in Scotland. Joining Isles on the flight back from Glasgow was California-born fly-half Folau Niua, who would also form a bedrock of his new team. But there were other challenges beyond the playing side. “I didn’t understand the landscape of America,” he admits. “I didn’t really understand how big it is. I know that sounds a silly thing to say, but I would say that to anybody. You don’t realise how big the place is until you are in it and how disparate and disconnected the rugby community is because of the vast nature of the country. You could be in different states, but you might as well be in different countries. 

“They had managed to get Alex Magleby [former USA sevens coach] on board, he didn’t want to coach or deal with any of that, but he understood the landscape. He understood the college landscape, he understood how the community game worked. He was able to deal with all the politics of this community, which is quite an insular rugby community.

“Getting a brash English bloke in, who just says it how it is, would, and did, cause friction. Which is where Mag’s was a great conduit to sit between.”

Mike’s maiden 2014/15 World Series proved historic for the USA. Early on there were promising signs under new leadership; finishing fifth in Port Elizabeth, then fourth two stops later on home soil in Las Vegas. Consistent performances in Hong Kong and Glasgow meant the Eagles would finish in the top ten, comfortably, for the first time. But it was in London that Mike’s team would shock the sevens world.

Pooled with South Africa, France and Portugal, the USA breezed past their opposition, topping the group with nine points and giving them a quarter-final against their biggest rivals, Canada. Dispatching their North American counterparts 29-10, an even bigger challenge would face Mike and his squad in the semi-final, Simon Amor’s England.

Twickenham was stunned by the visiting Americans, with Madison Hughes, Carlin Isles and Perry Baker each scoring two tries each, catapulting them to the final where they would beat Australia 45-22 to win their first ever leg on the World Series. 

Three nations, three top ten sides in the World Sevens Series, Mike has made a career out of making his mark in the abridged version of the game. Like every player, he started in fifteens, watching on from the touchline of Bromley RFC as his dad, Chris, scrummed down on the tighthead. 

Bromley’s minis and junior section started in 1977, with five-year-old Mike part of the club’s first intake of youngsters. Whilst attending Ravensbourne Schools, he would play football throughout the week, describing himself “as the player that would win the ball back to give it to the more talented players”.

Playing rugby at the weekends throughout his schooling, Mike never thought anything of going to a comprehensive, until attending county trials as an 18-year-old.

“I’ve got some really bad memories of going to country trials,” Mike says. “I remember being asked what school I went to and people looking down their nose at me and being left on the sideline for 75 minutes and getting a token few minutes at the end and then sent me on my way.

“It certainly gave me the chips on my shoulder,” he admits. “It did drive my sense of injustice, people know that I am all about everything being fair and everyone having an opportunity and that sense of equality.”

Upon leaving school, he would enter the Wasps Colts side. There, his teammates would include Lawrence Dallaglio and Paul Volley. Part of the club for three years, Mike was able to establish himself in the club’s second team, Steve Bates firmly holding onto the nine shirt in the First XV. 

However, wanting to play regular first team rugby, Mike would make the move to second division side Blackheath whilst completing his degree in Urban Real Estate Management at the Polytechnic of Central London, now known as the University of Westminster. 

His introduction to life at Blackheath would be a tour to South Africa, less than a year before apartheid would end in the country. A year later England would be touring the country and Mike and his team-mates would play several games in the country, including in the Zwide township where current Springbok captain, Siya Kolisi grew up. 

“I look back now at how surreal and amazing the experience was of going into that township,” Mike says. “We went in that day and walked the field to clear it of bullets, glass and everything. We drove back into the township, the bus driver was literally shitting himself, saying; ‘I can’t believe we are coming here at night time, what are we doing?’. We got out of the bus, got changed and the team talk was literally to not start a fight.

“We won the game convincingly, but the most special memory is that they scored a try and the place went mental. They were bouncing, dancing, singing, it was just phenomenal. Afterwards we went to their townhall, which was a wooden building, we brought a load of beers and we stayed for two or three hours, drunk beer and sang songs with them all. Then we left.

“The bus driver was shaking his head the whole time, not believing what he had just been through. It is those moments that, as a young man, you don’t realise how fortunate you are to experience and it showed the importance of the game and what it can bring.”

After four seasons with Blackheath and while working in the City, Mike would return to Wasps. Rugby had recently turned professional and as he was in the process of qualifying as a chartered surveyor, the scrum-half would instead sign on a quasi-professional basis. He was one of many professionals across the country at the time training on Tuesday and Thursday’s, before playing a top-flight game on the weekend. 

At this stage of his career, Mike had become established in the England Sevens side, having made his debut for his country in 1996. He came back to a Wasps team that were the champions of England, carrying on the side’s success with back to back Tetley’s Bitter Cup titles in 1999 and 2000, Mike coming off the bench in each final.

He captained England at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, in Kuala Lumpur. Famously, the tournament was renowned for the men in black as New Zealand eased to gold with a squad featuring the likes of Bruce Reihana, Christian Cullen, Dallas Seymour, Roger Randle and the late Jonah Lomu. The All Blacks beat Fiji 21-12 in the final, while England would exit the competition at the quarter-final stage, losing 49-14 to Australia.

After that Commonwealth Games, Mike’s next objective was to make it to the 2001 Sevens World Cup. With professional sevens contracts not being introduced until 2010, clubs and players would have to come to agreements about when players could be made available for selection to play seven-a-side rugby.

After reaching an impasse with Wasps DoR Nigel Melville, Mike would make the decision to move to West London to play for bitter rivals Harlequins at the Stoop.

“I don’t mind saying this out loud; it was the worst decision of my life,” Mike says. “I went for all the wrong reasons, but sometimes you have got to get it wrong to get it right. I made a stubborn decision and if I am honest, it was a bad one for me. 

“When I went back to Wasps a year later, I was very clear with Nigel and we had a very frank conversation. He said that he thought I was negotiating and I had to say that I wasn’t. I had my job and I didn’t need a lot of money because the reality was, I knew what I was doing, but it was what I needed to be able to compete at the Sevens World Cup in 2001.

“It all happened over five grand. At the time it was a big thing because it was all about the principal and all that bullshit. As a young man with a stubborn mind and a forthright attitude, it was probably the wrong thing.”

Even when Mike retired from professional club rugby after a final season as a Wasp in 2002, he carried on playing sevens for England whilst also working as assistant coach to Joe Lydon. 

After three years, Mike took over as head coach, with perhaps his greatest achievement coming at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, where England won a silver medal, falling short in the final 29-21 to Gordon Tietjens’ All Blacks. “It should have been gold,” he laughs. “But that’s life. We were in it and I made a change. I’m not sure how to say this, but I put Ben Gollings on, and he was like a turnstile. He was in his own head because he wasn’t starting. Henry Paul was starting. We were starting Taity in the centre, moving him to the wing when Varndell got tired and then we’d bring Gollings on.

“Ben was all mardy that he wasn’t starting and then he came on in that final and his head wasn’t in it. They ran two tries straight through him and we lost. That was a golden opportunity to break Titch’s stranglehold on the Commonwealth Games and we’d been outstanding the whole tournament. But that’s life, right? Those little moments.

“The next week we went to Hong Kong, won our fourth Hong Kong in a row and Ben was player of the tournament. 

“But yeah, Melbourne was a fabulous experience,” he continues. “We played Australia in our last group game in front of 80,000 people and it was almost like a knockout game. They had Matt Giteau, they had Lote Tuqiri and they had Chris Latham, but we were all young guns. We had a 20-year-old Taity, a 21-year-old Varndell, a 21-year-old Dave Seymour, a young Magnus Lund and a 19-year-old Danny Care in the squad. 

“It was ridiculous when you think about what them boys went on to do and that we came as close as we did. Were all those kids, for that experience, were they better players and more prepared for what came in their careers? Absolutely. Playing in front of 80,000, it is like playing a test match and those were the types of experiences that you could only get on the World Series.”

Eight months after Melbourne, he left England and wouldn’t return to the World Series until that offer from Nairobi seven years later. Instead, he would stay much closer to home and work full-time in the City, coaching Blackheath in National 1, as well as doing some sevens punditry when called upon.

For work, Mike returned to DTZ (now known as Cushman & Wakefield) but the financial crisis hit and, as one of the senior employees, had a task far worse than dropping a player for a match.

DTZ were placed into administration before being purchased by engineering business UGL in 2011, but in order to repay £77.5m of an outstanding debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland, redundancies had to be made, and that job was handed to Mike. “It was brutal,” he says. “I was the guy that had to deliver. It was huge. Telling a player that he hasn’t got a contract is very different to telling a 50-year-old man that he has no longer got the job that he has done and been exceptional at for the past fifteen, twenty years. These are people with responsibilities; a mortgage, kids in school and so on. Let’s be honest, the responsibilities of rugby players in their early 20s, in comparison, are not significant.”

Back to the present, and in 2020, Mike again had an employer with financial challenges, USA Rugby.

At the end of March, the union filed for Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court. The financial constraints were accelerated by Covid-19, leaving them little option but to try and find a way to pay off their debtors and essentially start afresh. 

USA Rugby has hardly been Fort Knox over the years. In 2018, they found themselves unable to fully fund the World Cup Sevens competition in San Francisco with World Rugby having to provide $4.4m in order to make up for their losses. Just a year later, the game’s governing body gave USA Rugby a further $1m after they overspent by $750,000 in their preparations for the Rugby World Cup in Japan. 

Then, in May 2019, USA Rugby was sued for $40m by United World Sports (UWS) in a breach of contract dispute after the company felt the nation’s national governing body had conspired against them to move the Las Vegas Sevens, which UWS hosted, to Los Angeles for the 2020 World Series and changing the host company. This was resolved in August, USA Rugby paying out an undisclosed amount to satisfy all parties as part of the liabilities listed in their bankruptcy process.

As part of the bankruptcy, World Rugby stepped in as a debtor-in-possession and would be financing the support of a reorganisation of how the union is run. At the end of August, USA Rugby announced that as of September they would be entering the post-bankruptcy phase, in which creditors would receive payments over the coming five years. 

Mike watched on from Bromley as all this was happening. “It was horrible, it was traumatic,” he recalls. “Dealing with Covid and all of that uncertainty and, while we are all highly adaptable and we can roll with the punches, ultimately we crave consistent routine. 

“Like everybody else, we like to know where we stand, because it allows you to focus. What was happening with the Series was concerning and that was compounded ten-fold by this bankruptcy where the whole squad was ripped apart.

“I was able to ringfence the players, but the trauma, the bullshit that the staff had to deal with as a result of that bankruptcy, which was not of our making with the high-performance teams, although we were bearing the brunt of it, it was really tough and hard to take. 

“Those few months back in the UK life were miserable because I was waking up to a load of emails that had come through in the night. When America came alive, you had a load more stuff to deal with and it just wasn’t enjoyable. 

“I must have rewritten strategic plans, tactical plans, God knows how many times and so many different versions of different budgets for bankruptcy and it was like writing business plans in the dark, whilst also trying to provide stability for the players. 

“It has been, and continues to be, a constant juggle of balls. Even getting back into the country was brutal. Getting my visa renewed was brutal to finally get back here to try and sort things out.”

Things are moving though, or at least they were, as Mike returned to San Diego in October, preparing to take the USA to the Olympic Games for the second time. 

Five years ago, Mike had to take the Eagles to a qualifier in North Carolina, but this time finishing second in the 2018/19 World Series secured their spot. That season consolidated the USA as one of the world’s premier sevens nations.

Reaching the final of each of the opening four legs of that year’s World Series, Mike’s team fell short twice to the giants of Fiji and New Zealand but still arrived in Las Vegas top of the series ladder. 

Living up to their billing, they stunned the Blitzboks 29-10 and then managed to overcome a 12-point deficit to come back against the All Blacks to win 24-19 and reach the final against Samoa. This time, they made no mistake and took the title, with Ben Pinkelman scoring two tries on the way to a 27-0 victory and extending their lead at the top of the World Series table. 

That win on home soil was the last final the team would reach that season. A week later in Vancouver, USA finished fourth, a month later in Hong Kong they finished third, in Singapore fourth again, before finishing third once more in London and fourth in Paris. Fiji, meanwhile, secured five consecutive podium finishes, seeing them beat the USA to the title, and win the series for a fourth time.

Despite the disappointment of not winning the World Sevens Series, the main objective of qualifying for the Olympic Games in Tokyo was achieved. “From an American perspective, it was a huge, huge thing in 2016,” says Mike of when they first qualified for Olympic sevens in Rio. “The Olympics here are on a different level, even to the UK. It was a fantastic experience for me, but for the players it was fucking massive and for me to be able to take a nation there like the USA, it was great. 

“A year earlier, we were given a less than ten per cent chance and by the time we arrived at the tournament, we were contenders. 

“The reality of it all is that the Olympics is a twelve-team tournament and it was going to be brutal. What we didn’t realise is just how brutal it would be [in 2016]. I have never been involved in a tournament like that, where it was almost gladiatorial. It was coliseum stuff because every result in every pool affected everybody else because of what was going on.”

In a group with eventual champions Fiji, the USA failed to qualify for the quarter-finals because of a points difference of one.  “That tournament typified sevens as a sport,” Mike says. “It was a mental tournament. When I look back at it, the record books say we finished ninth. Part of me says ‘fuck that is embarrassing’, but this is a tournament that we never should have been at. 

“It was testament to the boys that we went as contenders when they really shouldn’t have been there. Maybe 2016 was a bit too early, but from there we needed to kick on. It was a low point sitting in that changing room when we realised we had gone out on a points difference of one. When I look back on it, it was just part of what the group needed to go through. 

“What people fail to understand is that the American psyche is that sport is win or lose. There is no middle ground. They are very unforgiving of people that don’t win. Which can be a lovely trait but can also be a shitty trait.”

It is their 2018/19 World Series campaign that gives USA Rugby hope of bringing back a medal at the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Churning out consistent performance after consistent performance across that season, their efforts did more than enough to make people aware of the threat that the USA pose.

As a result of Covid-19, the 2019/20 will go down in the record books as Mike Friday’s lowest ever finish with the USA on the World Series. Less than a year on from guiding the Americans to a second-place finish in the competition, automatically qualifying them for the Olympics in Tokyo, it was without many of his star names that Mike had pulled his squad to seventh in the overall standings. 

He started the 2019/20 without the likes of Ben Pinkelman and Martin Iosefo, the pair selected by Gary Gold to play 15s at the Rugby World Cup in Japan. USA Sevens captain Madison Hughes was also considered for selection by Gary Gold, but didn’t make the 31-man roster, and veteran playmaker Folau Niua was out with a long-term injury suffered against Samoa in Paris, the final leg of the 2018/19 season.

Now, having had the extra 12 months to prepare for the tournament, those that seemed unlikely to make the squad have the opportunity. Many of the players will have experienced the lows of 2016 and were sat in that changing room after being knocked out of the Games on points difference. 

“We know what we are capable of and we know that if we apply ourselves and we make sure that we give ourselves every opportunity to do that, which is about doing the hard work now, on and off the pitch,” Mike says. “If we do that, we are more than capable of medalling.

“We know that and the whole world knows that, so do the other teams that are going to be there. Any team, ten or eleven of them can medal. That is what makes the Olympic Sevens the tournament that it is. There is a bounce of the ball element to it, but literally on any given Sunday, anybody can beat anybody.

“That is what happened in 2016 and we were on the wrong end of that. There were mistakes from that 2016 that we certainly won’t make again and we are better equipped to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.” 

Story by  Joe Harvey

Pictures by  John Matthew Harrison

This extract was taken from issue 12 of Rugby.
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