Making the switch – how athletes come to Rugby Sevens

As we saw from our DHL Impact Players during the 2015/16 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, the Sevens game is a high-intensity game that requires the highest level of skill, strength, and endurance. It’s not a game for every athlete, but some players have successfully made the switch from other professional sports. With that in mind, we took a look at how some of our athletes from other DHL partnerships would stack up!

The rules are vastly different, but there are some physical aspects of American football and Rugby that are quite similar. Athletes from both sports need to know how to tackle, speed is essential, and ball handling is key. This similarity wasn’t lost on Nate Ebner. He’s an active American football player in the NFL who recently made the switch to Rugby Sevens.

That’s no small feat: Rugby players don’t wear pads, of course, and there aren’t as many breaks in the action that there are in American football. But, Ebner did so well in Rugby Sevens that he’ll take a brief leave of absence from his football team, the New England Patriots, to compete in the Rugby Sevens competition in Rio!

The success of Ebner and other athletes who made the successful crossover to Rugby Sevens got us thinking – how would some of the athletes in the DHL family do if they made the switch to the Sevens game?

Players from the 15s game have had pretty good success in crossing over to Sevens. Cheslin Kolbe of the DHL Stormers is a good example: he's has played in 46 sevens matches and scored 20 tries.

Then it gets interesting – tackles are a bit different in soccer than they are in Rugby (and players don’t have much experience carrying the ball with their hands!) so how would Yuki Abe from the Urawa Reds in Japan do if he suited up for a Sevens match? IndyCar driver Ryan Hunter-Reay races around circuits at breakneck speeds, but would he be fast enough to outrun some of the fastest defenders in the game on a Rugby pitch?

Perhaps the most interesting comparison would be Filip Suchy, a Czech ice hockey player. What would Rugby Sevens look like on ice?

Over the next few weeks, keep an eye on @DHLRugby on Twitter and Facebook for head-to-head matchups between our DHL Impact Player Award winners and other athletes from DHL’s partnerships. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see some brand new crossover athletes taking the pitch in next season’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series – there’s only one way to find out, so stay tuned!