Demi Hayes combines cut-out passes and cutting out cattle

Demi Hayes is a champion campdrafter and it’s been a careful road she and Tim Walsh have had to tread to get to this week.

Australian women’s sevens player Demi Hayes in action in a campdrafting event

Australia’s Rio Olympic gold medal-winning women’s sevens coach Tim Walsh knows so little about campdrafting that he is scratching to think of things that could go wrong in the sport. But whatever they might be, he has full faith that Demi Hayes won’t do them.

It is pretty much a ragtag team that Walsh has moulded into Olympic champions and now taken to the Commonwealth Games. Some of his players come from a touch football background, some from athletics, some, curiously enough, even come from rugby. But only one, Demi Hayes, is a champion campdrafter and it’s been a careful road she and Walsh have had to tread to get to this week, when women’s rugby will appear on the Commonwealth Games program for the first time.

Hayes has done it essentially since she learned to ride a horse at the age of three. “Some people go skiing on the weekends ... my family went campdrafting,” said Hayes, who grew up in Glenmorgan (population 86) in the Western Downs area of Queensland.

“After school, we’d pack up the caravan and the horses and head off to wherever the competition was, sometimes five or six hours’ drive away.”

A trifling amount by the standard of Queensland country folk, who have been known to make a cricketer 12th man when he drove eight hours to get to a match but missed the toss by five minutes. Still, the Hayes family take it very seriously indeed, so much so that at the age of 13, Demi won the ­national junior title.

She even kept up the competition when she went to boarding school at Fairholme in Toowoomba to do her final year of schooling. As it happens, Fairholme has played an integral role in the rise of Australia’s women’s rugby program, with Rio Olympic gold medallists Emily Cherry and Emma Etheridge going there, along with Dominic du Toit. So when she wasn’t performing a “cut out” in campdrafting — cutting a steer or heifer from the herd — Hayes could be found throwing cut-out passes herself. And with Fairholme recognised as a terrific breeding ground, she was spotted playing touch and set on the path to a ­totally unexpected career as a professional rugby player.

“She has basically come through the pathways,” said Walsh. “She played in the Australian youth team (winning gold in the Commonwealth Youth Games in Samoa) and went from there.”

When Walsh looked to refresh the Olympic champions after 2016, it was to players like Hayes that he turned.

“She has all the attributes that we were looking for. She’s very fit, very quick and quite tall, which is an advantage,” he said.

There was, of course, the campdrafting but Walsh saw that not as a concern but a bonus. “It’s part of her life balance, she’s not playing rugby day in, day out. It’s something that speaks to her and keeps her in a mentally good space. She’s never fallen off a horse, which is good so she’s not going to do anything foolish. I confess I don’t know what you can do in campdrafting in terms of something silly, but she’s obviously good at it. It’s not an issue at all.”

The fact that Hayes made the Commonwealth Games team has not been universally appreciated, with some of her horses seriously missing her. Her parents, Bec and Michael, are able to ride some of them to keep their condition up but some will only allow her in the saddle.

“I do campdrafting now but just for fun,” said Hayes, now 19. “I would love to go back to the sport but I intend to play rugby as long as I possibly can.”

The past few weeks have been stressful, however. The 13-woman Commonwealth Games squad was chosen in mid-March but sadly only 12 can be named in the matchday squad. Hayes is well aware of what it means to be cut from the herd, especially when she was coming back from a broken hand and a stress fracture in her foot — both rugby injuries — and knew how difficult it would be to break back into the team that won the Sydney Sevens in January.

She was told last Friday that she was in the side but the relief that came with Walsh’s announcement also was a cause of sadness since the player cut was another Darling Downs girl, Georgina Friedrichs.

Her cause is not lost entirely, however. Because of the nature of rugby, injuries are common and Friedrichs will remain with the squad to fill in if required.

The Australian team arrived on the Gold Coast last Monday but spent only two days in the village to get acquainted with it before relocating to the Sunshine Coast.

Australia are the gold medal favourites and are keeping a wary eye on Canada and England.

But as always the main threat comes from New Zealand, the team they beat in the Olympic final, the team they beat in the Sydney Sevens.