Aussie coaches throw curveballs towards athletes in preparation of Rio chaos

THE plan to prepare Australia’s women's seven team for the chaos of Rio was going well until they thought their campaign was screwed. Here’s how Tim Walsh prepared his squad.

Charlotte Caslick‘s ‘injury’ against Japan was a ploy by coach Tim Walsh to prepare his squad for Rio

THE plan to prepare Australia’s women's seven team for the chaos of Rio was going well until the team thought their Rio campaign was screwed.

As one of an array of curveballs he’d thrown at his team, coach Tim Walsh had recruited the team’s best player Charlotte Caslick to fake an injury in the warm-up of their final game of the friendly series against Japan in Sydney.

The problem was Caslick took the task with so much enthusiasm she “deserved an Academy award”, Walsh said last week.

The 2015 World Player of the year nominee grabbed at a shoulder and screamed the house down. With less than six weeks until the Olympics, her shell-shocked teammates were gutted as a grimacing Caslick was taken away.

Walsh told them to get their minds back on the job and focus on the game, which they duly won.

But the team’s heavy hearts only lifted when Caslick ran on the field after the final whistle yelling “surprise!”.

“They said they were going to kill me after that one,” Walsh laughed.

Given Walsh’s form in the last year, they should have known.

Women’s Sevens coach Tim Walsh used unorthodox methods to prepare his squad for Rio

Along with colleague Andy Friend in the men’s program, Walsh had pieced together an elaborate plan to simulate as much about the highs and lows of an Olympics as possible for a group who would all be making their Games’ debuts.

The team made a special trip to Rio after playing in Sao Paulo to get their bearings, but it was when they played a practice series against New Zealand in February, and then Japan in June, that Walsh wound up his tricks.

“The Olympics is new to everybody so we had three-day mock tournaments, we tried to simulate what might happen. We stayed in a hotel and were waking them up every few hours, that sort of thing,” Walsh said.

“One game I didn’t turn up. If they leave their doors open I would take their boots or something.

“We just tried to throw in all these curveballs to test them.”

The story goes Walsh had to be talked out of banging on doors in the middle of the night to simulate a fire alarm.

As luck would have it, the fire alarm in the next building went off anyway.

“When we first started out we said we were going to be a team that adapts. That’s a big part of sevens. You travel the world, you get delayed, buses don’t turn up. Bags go missing,” Walsh said.

“We decided nothing was going to be a problem for us. We would always adapt, and push on.”

Friend did the same with the men’s team during their practice series against Japan.

The squad stayed in cramped caravans at Narrabeen to get used to the potential dodginess of an Olympic Village, and on day one, had to walk a few kilometres to play their game after Friend cancelled the bus.

Friend even gave several players yellow cards in the middle of games.

Originally published as Aussie coaches throw curveballs towards athletes in preparation of Rio chaos