We arrive at this second tour of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series on the back of a good first tournament in Dubai with bad results, and a tournament in Cape Town for which we changed a few things and brought a great outcome as we managed to make the final.

Of course, we welcome good results as they are good for the team. It pushes them, it makes them work harder but more than that it convinces the players and the team that we are on the right path.

Our goals continue to be to continue growing and crossing the barrier of Cup quarter-finals as many times as we can.

During January we spent a week with the squad in Pinamar, a seaside city on our Atlantic beaches. It is very difficult for us during the season to find the right time to work with no constraints as we can’t really interfere with their work with their clubs as we can’t overload them.

After the Christmas and New Year we needed this week to fine-tune the fitness and the game plan and it was very positive for our plans.

Positive mindset 

During those days, the Sudamérica Rugby Sevens was played in Punta del Este (Uruguay) and Viña del Mar (Chile). These tournaments show us that Argentine rugby needs more work. Given the amount of players involved in high performance for the Unión Argentina de Rugby, we select our players from a deeper pool, after Los Pumas, Jaguares, Argentina XV and Pumitas U20. Our top 13 sevens players were in Pinamar in our workout.

What we lacked with the teams that went to both tournaments was time together. The ultimate goal was not to win tournaments but to see players, some of which we had tried throughout the season and others who shone at club level during the season that finished in November. And in that sense, it helped as we managed to confirm things with some players. The information we put together was positive.

We have added two debutants to our squad for Sydney and Hamilton. Neither shone in Punta del Este, but we saw in them things we’d seen during the season. Both Severiano Escobio and Nito Provenzano had great club seasons and played against each other in the Buenos Aires club final. We have a lot of hope on their performance with our team.

So, we arrived in Sydney with high spirits after Cape Town. The players understand that hard work pays off, that we are a capable team. They are convinced of their strength which is positive.

As they learnt with the first tour, the mental aspect is crucial. Not for how they played as they played very similarly in both tournaments, but more important on how to close out games.

We must continue that same path in Sydney, convinced that hard work pays off.