Australia’s rugby sevens coach Michael O’Connor believes Luke Morahan has shown it’s possible to successfully combine a 15-a-side elite career with sevens.
The Queensland Reds back has only just returned from being called up to the Wallabies to take part in this weekend’s first leg of the IRB world sevens on the Gold Coast.
And O’Connor cites Morahan as an example of a player who is benefiting by combining sevens with his 15-a-side duties.
“I don’t see that they’re mutually exclusive,” O’Connor told AAP.
“He’s a very good sevens player that I had in my first squad four years ago as an 18-year-old so he understands sevens, has played sevens and has been very good at playing sevens.
“He’s found that by playing sevens and getting sevens-fit, it actually helps his 15s. He plays his best 15s when he’s sevens-fit.
“There are players like that, who if you grab hold of them, they’re class players who have played sevens who are happy to come back.”
Even established Wallabies such as Kurtley Beale may consider trying their hand at sevens with the form of the game set to make its Olympic debut at Rio in 2016.
“I don’t know what his fitness would be like but certainly he’s got the skillset to play sevens,” O’Connor said when asked about Beale.
“There’s no doubt about it, I think he’d be electrifying (if he played sevens).”
The prospect isn’t out of this world, with the Olympics adding to sevens’ already attractive overseas opportunities.
“We play in an international competition which takes us to Hong Kong, Dubai, London, Las Vegas, the Gold Coast, South Africa. Some of the great destinations of the world,” he said.
“We’ve got the World Cup, we’ve got the Commonwealth Games, we’ve got the Olympic Games and we’ve got a great international competition that’s seen huge growth overseas.”
First and foremost though is this weekend’s tournament on the Gold Coast with O’Connor desperate to make a strong start to this year’s IRB sevens series.
Australia open their tournament on Saturday against Tonga and have to negotiate a tough pool including the Pacific islanders, their near-neighbours Fiji and Scotland.
O’Connor said he was hopeful strong support would get the team’s Olympic preparations off to a good start.
“We play to fairly hostile crowds throughout the world and this would be great to have our home crowd support,” he said.
“It kicks off our Olympic cycle, it’s an important tournament. We have been notoriously slow starters so we’d really like to jump out of the blocks if we could this weekend.”