Paul Treu in the BOKzine hotseat

Every Springbok supporter should be a subscriber to BOKzine, the official online-magazine of the South African Rugby Union.

If you’re not, click here to correct this oversight while we turn our collective heads in mock disdain!

BOKzine has a great feature where supporters get the chance to ask rugby personalities questions. This time around Springbok Sevens coach Paul Treu faced the readers.

BlitzBokke.com is reproducing the feature below but you can catch the SARU-link here

For the record, the last reader (Nico Jansen) is NOT any family of this writer and if he was, he would be exorcised right here!

Bloody agent!

Paul Treu answers BOKzine readers’ questions below

Question: If Mat Turner’s talent had been acknowledged and he played for the the Bok 7s, would this have been an advantage? – Gorex

Answer: Unfortunately for Mat, Robert Ebersohn, Lionel Mapoe and Ryno Benjamin were ahead of him in the 2008/09 World Series season – when we won the Series title for the first time. Mat was certainly in our plans, but unfortunately he was competing with those players as well as Cecil Afrika, who at the time could not even break into the squad. We had a settled team then, which resulted in the World Series success. Mat has proven himself to be a good Sevens players and an asset to the England team. When I wanted to invite him to the training camps, he had already made the decision to make himself available for England.

Former South African player Matthew Turner (Pic: Warren Little/Getty Europe)

Question: No Question, I just want to say Well Done to the Sevens Team for the Las Vegas Victory. You have made SA & SA Rugby proud. – Delsia Overberg

Answer: Thank you Delsia and your interest and ongoing for the team is much appreciated.

Question: Please explain why we cannot do consistently well in Sevens rugby. – Greg Martin

Answer: It takes a while for the players to get use to Sevens after they have played 15-man rugby for their entire rugby career. Sevens requires a different mentally and skills set, as well as conditioning in order for a player to successfully compete internationally. Experience has showed us that it take about three years for new players to make that full transition from 15-man rugby to Sevens. Added to that, the bulk of the players used to spent a season or two in Sevens before moving back to provincial and or Super Rugby.

Question: (American here) What do you think the USA need to focus on to develop our Sevens and raise our general level of Rugby? – David Stifler

Answer: The USA has a vast reservoir of talent and I suppose it is a matter of tapping into that resource. Americans have the certainly the athletic ability and capacity. However, for the USA to become more competitive they will have to raise the profile of especially the Sevens game, to focus on a core group of players so that those players can get the necessary exposure and experience by competing at various tournaments outside of the HSBC Sevens World Series tournaments. In South Africa, we do that by allowing the SA Vipers and other invitational sides to compete in tournaments such as Singapore Cricket Club Sevens, the Carlton Sri Lanka Sevens, The Tusker Safari tournament in Kenya and also the Dubai Social International tournaments.

Question: why do your team play as if they are bigger then rugby? Please drop Renfred Deysel. – Nico Jansen

Answer: My feedback from various quarters are that the Sevens team are good ambassadors for our game and South Africa, and we will continuously strive to make people proud of us by displaying good conduct on and off the field. Individual performances – in training and competition – are assessed on a daily basis and I’m comfortable with our players management system at the moment.