GB Sevens qualify for Paris 2024: 'It's amazing for the game and for women's sport.'

Great Britain’s women’s sevens team secured an all-important place for the Olympics in Paris next year with a triumphant 33-0 win against Poland in the final of the European Games on Tuesday.

At the London Sevens a few weeks ago, HSBC Global Ambassadors Abbie Brown and Nolli Waterman discussed the intricacies of the Great Britain teams now competing in the World Series and their fond memories of the Olympics.

Brown, who co-captained the squad for the European Games and was chosen to be one of Team GB’s flag bearers for the opening ceremony has been at the heart of the sevens set-up for many years.

Having been in the Team GB team for both the inaugural year of sevens being included at the Olympics in 2016 and at the most recent Olympics in 2021, Brown has seen the development of the Great Britain team first-hand from the ground up.

As the first year of competing as a Great Britain team on the World Series has drawn to a close and the team return from Kraków in emphatic fashion with a European gold medal around their necks, the future looks bright for the newly formed team.

Brown said:“It’s been really good. It’s been great having some Scottish girls in, and people like Jaz (Joyce) in and actually coming together.

“We come together for an Olympics but it’s only once every four years. We did it a year before Rio, and six months before Tokyo, and trying to win a medal with six months of preparation is never going to work. Now we’re going to have had two years, we’ve got the staff there, we’ve got the players all wanting to be there.

“There have been challenges, of course there have because it’s a new programme and trying to get three nations into one has its own challenge, but I think it’s amazing for the game and it’s amazing for women’s sport at the moment. Also, for the men, they were the ones that were going to struggle more because they were all on the series last year, but they’ve done amazingly well. How everyone dealt with it is a credit to them as well.”

With her sights firmly set on going to a third consecutive Olympic games, Brown also spoke of the togetherness competing as a Great Britain team throughout the year brings.

“The sevens and the rugby world is big, and then you go to that scale [Olympics] and you’re like we are not even a drop in the ocean,” she said.

“We’ve got Rhona Lloyd and Lisa Thomson on our team and they’re Scottish through and through, and to have their parents cheering us now, they would have never dreamed of it. They’re still correcting people, people sometimes still say the England team and they say we are not the England team.

“It is cool, it’s amazing how it brought us together and we’re feeling that especially when we’re going around, in particular this year, people want to support us because we’re GB and not England.”

Togetherness is a key theme in the Great Britain team, but it is also felt across the sevens circuit as players from different teams travel across the globe together to play in the World Series.

Brown has experienced playing in two Olympic games, and while both have had their unique differences, the familiarity of the sevens players involved in the tournament remains constant.

“Rio compared to Tokyo was very different because of Covid, it was very strange, but there was the whole Zika stuff before Rio so there’s always been something,” she explained.

“The biggest thing for me was probably the people in the stadium. In Tokyo, there wasn’t anyone, but also for me it made it be just about the rugby for a moment, and actually, especially because I was quite young when I went to Rio, it was so like wow, this is the Olympics, this is amazing, but in Tokyo, I just took time to be like this is just a game, this is just another game of rugby. I think I probably enjoyed it more because I just took it as it came and from a GB point of view no one expected anything from us.

“That America game [quarter-final, 2021] was probably the best game I’d ever played I absolutely loved it. I feel like we probably defended for 12 minutes of the 14.

“It’s also hard because sevens is this weird and wonderful place where you make friends with people on opposite teams and you feel their heartache but you’re also so happy and you have this weird mix of emotions. I remember Abby Gustaitis was crying and I just hugged her because I was like I just want to hug you and I want to embrace you because I feel your emotion, but I also am so happy for myself, it was a really weird dynamic.”

For the women’s teams, the formation of a Great Britain team outside of the Olympics extended the opportunity to compete in the World Series to players from Wales and Scotland as England had been the only team to consistently play in the tournament before the change.

For the men, all three teams of England, Scotland, and Wales had competed at the World Series before and with that came added complexities in forming one team.

Now a commentator and ambassador for sevens after a glittering rugby career across sevens and 15s, Waterman shared her thoughts on the now more permanent Great Britain set-up and what that has meant for the men’s and women’s programmes.

She said: “From my perspective, the challenge with the men’s was that you had three teams, so you had potentially 36 players playing on the World Series, you then go down to 13 players getting the opportunity on each of the tournaments with HSBC and the World Series. From the women’s point of view and what is wonderful about sevens, is the eclectic mix of the countries that are involved. To be able to have Welsh and Scottish women representing Team GB on the World Series is unbelievable.”

She went on to describe the impact having a Great Britain team all year round has had on fan bases but also stressed the complexities involved with the early stages of combining players from different teams from a performance perspective.

“It means that the engagement of the fans, there is absolutely no way they would be cheering England for success, but they’re absolutely behind that [Great Britain sevens team]. From that perspective, and also with HSBC pushing so hard to make sure that there are combined tournaments, that showcase of three nations and the ability, naturally flows down to the 15-a-side game,” she explained.

“From that point of view, listening to the crowd out here in London, being in Hong Kong and sitting in the stands and being sat with a Welsh woman and a Scottish guy, and them cheering on the girls, I’m thinking this is what it’s all about, this is brilliant!

“It’s what sevens champions so well, in terms of that diversity of the teams, that’s what they’ve done really well. It’s just from a performance perspective that’s really hard, to combine different cultures and different abilities. You’ve got the best players in there [GB sevens] from their nations, and then all of a sudden you become one.”

Waterman played for Team GB at the Rio 2016 Olympics, the first time that sevens was included in the iconic sporting event and spoke fondly about the importance of sevens being involved in such a major event.

“The Olympics is, for any young person that loves sport or even doesn’t love sport but gets to see the magic of sport through the Olympics, to be able to go to Rio and be part of the first ever time that women’s sevens and rugby sevens were there, it was so incredibly special,” she said proudly.

“To then be a fan watching from home and being able to watch Abbie lead the girls was heartbreak at the end [in Tokyo], but at the same time so great because our sport, rugby, is a very special sport.

“To have it on the world stage, we obviously have it with the World Series, but then to have it at the Olympics as well and that side of it, it just brings in more people to the game and more eyeballs on it, which then naturally reflects on men’s and women’s and I think that that’s really cool,” she added.