It’s all well and good to have the best athletes, but if there was one thing everyone involved in the Black Ferns Rio Olympics campaign learned, it’s that what happens off the field can make the difference. or break what happens on it.
A reset was needed and “people first” would be at the heart of that change. Led by new coach Allan Bunting and a large, diverse leadership group, the Black Ferns Sevens set course on what would prove to be a five-year path to not only win gold at the Tokyo Olympics and become world dominant, but also mana of the sweater and inspire people.
In Sevens Sistersveteran sports channel Rikki Swannell takes a deep dive into team culture and interviews players, coaches and management to explain how their unique approach has shaped their success.
This excerpt is taken from a chapter called ‘Black Gold’ – at the very end of New Zealand’s Gold Medal-Winning Achievement at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
At busy times, big decisions had to be made and two big decisions came before the whistle for extra time. The first was created by Allan Bunting. He got to make one substitution to replace Kelly Brazier, and he had a choice: Portia Woodman, the all-time top goalscorer in the women’s sevens who had just completed a chase that effectively saved the game, or Gayle Broughton, the unpredictable, unorthodox player. who had so often made an impact from the bench and had perhaps been the best of the Black Ferns Sevens on the field all week.
READ MORE:
* The change that made Olympic gold medal winning NZ Sevens Sisters great
* Golden Chance for the Black Ferns Sevens at the Commonwealth Games
* Shocking announcement of retirement of rugby sevens star Gayle Broughton
Bunting: “Portia looked at me and said, ‘Put me on’ and Gayle looked at me and said, ‘Put on Portia’. But I knew at that moment we needed someone in the middle of the field, we needed Gayle to create something, and Portia had hit the bull’s eye with that chase. I turned to Gayle and said, ‘It’s you,’ and when she questioned me, I told her I was absolutely sure.”
Broughton was haunted by fear.
“I don’t know why, but I couldn’t shake my nerves in that match and I stood there thinking, ‘Please don’t pick me Bunts, please don’t choose me’. Shiray Kaka came up to me and gave me a pep talk, but I was just so damn scared and didn’t believe in myself at the time However I realized Bunts had trust and confidence when he chose me Before I took to the field he said ‘Whatever happens I will still love you all the time,” and from that point on I went from absolutely scared to feeling, “Yeah, Shiray is right, I was made for these moments. I’ve had so many moments in my life where I constantly got up, even when I went to was pushed down.’”
The restart is one of the most vital aspects of the game in sevens rugby and New Zealand would kick off in extra time in a bid to pull off one of their set plays and regain possession right away. The second big decision was made by Captain Sarah Hirini.
“Normally the first receiver calls the kick-off and maybe if the attackers want it we’ll overrule, but Fitzy [Theresa Fitzpatrick] made the call to go to Michaela’s [Blyde] side, which I agreed with because I trust her decision-making. I don’t know why but I just felt like I had to change the call…Stacey [Fluhler] had come back on the field before the full-time whistle and she was standing on the other side, waving, and I knew what our best kick was when she was the receiver. I had an internal battle with myself – I trusted Fitzy, but why not go see Stacey? It must have been 30 seconds to think between the two options, and I knew I would regret it if I didn’t change the call and Fiji went down to score in the end.”
Kenji Demura/Photosport
Gayle Broughton gets the round of applause from her Black Ferns teammates after his match-winning intervention.
The call changed, Tyla Nathan-Wong put it on a dime and Fluhler flew up.
“I had a lot of confidence before kick-off, I knew we needed possession and that Fiji would have the upper hand if we didn’t get it,” said Fluhler. “I have my own little processes that I go through at kickoff, so I never really thought of it as a pressure moment, and when it got into my hands, it was the best feeling ever.”
New Zealand rushed onto the pitch, held the ball for three minutes and after a massive carry from Hirini the ball ended up in the young woman’s hands from the wrong side of the court, a young woman with more skill and ability than she’d ever realized , who, without a nudge from her grandmother and the will to make something great of herself, could have been anywhere but that field at that moment. With a little magic, a whirl and a twist, Gayle Broughton scored the match-winning try. The way she describes it is like an Xbox game.
“There are four defenders on my right, I can’t go that way. Minis [Michaela Blyde] on my left, Tyla is just behind me and there is no defender on the post on my left: go that way. Defender encounters: spider; defender to my right: defend, push off and put the ball down. It felt like everything was slowing down physically and my brain was going into an instinctive mode.
As her teammates rushed toward her in various states of elation and exhaustion, Broughton had an expressionless look on her face; she was ready to go back half way and go again, before realizing she had won the match and placed New Zealand in the gold medal match. Five years of grind on the pitch, growing, trusting, testing and pushing the boundaries of team, culture and friendship came down to a few critical moments.
“Bunts and I had always said the dream was to go to the Olympics and watch from the stands…that would mean we’d done our job,” said co-coach Cory Sweeney. ‘That kick-off’ [to start extra time] emphasized calmness, confidence and leadership – Stacey takes it in full swing, Gossy [Sarah Hirini] make a last minute change based on a photo she saw, then boom: three stages and Gayle scores. In the extra time we could have been in the stands.”
There may have been a sense of calm about the team and the coaches in those final pulsating moments, but those around the stadium and back in New Zealand who had absolutely no influence on the outcome were in various states of despair, nerves frayed, fingernails bit down with hearts pounding from their chests. dr. Deb Robinson and high performance manager Tony Philp had refused to move from where they had been throughout the tournament, high up in the stands at the far end of the stadium, while strength and conditioning coach Brad Anderson hid in a corner to the side of the field.
Anderson: “I’m normally very calm, but I was swearing and kicking chairs and the poor Japanese volunteer next to me looked so scared and upset that I started to bow and apologize. Frankly, I’m glad we didn’t have an audience there because the Fijian supporters and the neutrals would have drowned out the Kiwis and it could have been the piece they needed to cross the line.”
Under the stands, team analyst Stu Ross was not in much better shape.
Dan Mullan/Getty Images
Stacey Fluhler storms through the Fiji defense to score a try at the Tokyo Olympic Sevens semifinals.
“All the analysts are together in a room about 100 meters from the pitch, so the Fijian man was on one side and I was on the other. I think I spit in my mouth, I was shaking physically and then we played probably 90 seconds of how we should play the game: regaining the kick-off, two minor falls, but we got it back and we score a try.. Thank you for 20 minutes of hell to give us almost a minute of perfection.
At home, Nikita Hall, the team’s highly regarded personal development manager, was juggling a Farah Palmer Cup match, part of the vast roster, while watching what was going on in Tokyo. Hall’s role within the team means she connects with players on a very holistic level, enabling them to develop as individuals and rugby players; she’s made a huge impact on the group since she got started in 2019 and in most players’ minds she’s the unsung hero of their support staff. They put her through the wringer.
Hall says: “It was exciting to watch – it really felt like a roller coaster ride of emotions, from the pride of seeing our wahine toa in that black jersey in an Olympic semi-final, to the crushing realization that they might be a little short to realize their golden dream .
“Suffice it to say that after a night out, my nauseating stomach was put to the test as I watched the game clock tick. I don’t think a better finish could have been written – to see Gayle come down to her absolute authentic best point with complete confidence, taking advantage of Sarah’s genius, in a move that no doubt took a lot of time as a young Taranaki child who the local Hāwera boys… The relief and euphoria was overwhelming, coupled with ‘f..k that was too close’.”
And Niall Williams, who should have been in the middle of the action but instead was preparing to travel to a TV studio in Auckland.
“I’ve gone through every emotion you can think of. I paced around the house, going back and forth to the lounge to watch the TV, screaming, crying, my kids thought I was crazy. I never really understood what it was like for friends and family watching us, but after that I never want to see that game again.”
Such was the extraordinary nature of the semi-final, the gold medal match against France has almost become secondary to the story of the Olympic campaign in Tokyo. France had passed through the competition largely unscathed and had an experienced team with a handful of excellent spoilsports. France is a team that plays every element of the game at 100 percent full noise, but after Fiji’s unorthodoxy, the Black Ferns Sevens felt like they knew what was coming.
Stacey Fluhler: “From their kickoff structures, their lineouts, their restarts, nothing really changed, which was good for us because we prepared for that. We had done our homework and all the analysis, so we were intensely focused.
“We knew the only thing we had to be aware of with France was that they would continue even if they went into hiding, so we had to put pressure on their skills and as long as we had the ball and possession I think we knew we would probably pass them by.”
Despite some still feeling the physical effects of the semi-finals, it was clear that New Zealand had already passed their biggest hurdle, and as good as France was, there was no way to deny the Black Ferns. A 19-5 lead at halftime turned into a 26-12 full-time score, and with it the coveted Olympic gold medal.
- Withdrawn from Sevens Sisters: How a Human-Centric Culture Turned Silver into Gold by Rikki Swannell (Upstart Press, MSRP $39.99).