A little piece of history in Guildford

Spain, happy with their performance in Guildford

The French and Spanish sevens squads travelled to England for a triangular training tournament at the University of Surrey Sports Park in Guildford (home of the pool stages for the XVs World Cup in 2010), the training base for the England and Great Britain sevens squads, last week.

Spain arrived fresh from a week’s training at altitude in Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, while the French squad were meeting for a planned national training weekend, with not games in the Top 8.

It was very much a behind-closed-doors training event, with little or no media coverage, so most scores have not been published. However we do know that the home side played as Great Britain – a little piece of history as it is the first “official” Great Britain team to play for over 28 years – with the Scots and Welsh Olympic nominees joining the English players on the field for the first time.

In addition, for France, it was the first time that their recently expanded squad had played together since they qualified for the Olympics last summer.

Given the training nature of the event it is hard to draw any conclusion from the results (most of which have not been published), but Spain were also very happy with the event as they came away with some good results that included a 26-0 win over France and a 19-12 win over Great Britain, while France were declared narrow “winners” of the tournament, with three wins, two defeats and a draw.

Perhaps as a result most of the comment since has come from the French. France’s Marjorie Mayans (who plays as a forward with the sevens team) said that "It was a mixed tournament and we are satisfied with our progress over the two days. We have managed to eliminate apparent weaknesses relatively quickly, and find the right mindset against some very competitive teams."

Captain Fanny Horta added "It was a very interesting week, with quality matches. It allows us to gauge our progress and work together, with some girls being tried out at different positions from those they are used to. And of course it’s good to puts this in a tournament context and take us forward to our first stop is Dubai in December."

The same teams are due to gather again in Elche, in Spain, before Dubai. In the meanwhile France have flown straight from England to South Africa for a further fortnight of preparation in the warmth and relative altitude of Pretoria, while Spain returned to Madrid for more training.