Olympic dream spurring on Morgan Williams

The two Welshmen have been close friends and playing partners since childhood. After Tom was forced to miss the opening three rounds of the series due to shoulder surgery, he’s now back to full fitness and the two Welsh trailblazers will face hosts New Zealand, Hong Kong winners Australia and invitational team Tonga in Pool B.

Great Britain are currently sitting in 10^th position on the points table but with just seven points separating the top five teams, the competition is proving fierce and a good tournament result would soon jettison GB up the charts.

Morgan began his playing career at Caernarfon RFC where his father was head coach. He admits he ‘used to be at the club all week,’ and went through the age grades with RGC. He played for Wales U18s before signing for Ospreys at 18 years of age.

He made his debut on the world series in round eight of the 2015/16 season, in Singapore. In the fourth round of the 2016/17 series in Sydney, he became the first Welsh player to score a hat-trick against Fiji since Rhys Jones achieved the accolade four years earlier.

He played in Vancouver and Edmonton for Team GB in the 2021 series and also played in the first two legs of the 2021-22 HSBC Sevens World Series for Team GB alongside Welsh teammates Luke Treharne and Tom Williams. The trio then completed the campaign with Wales, where Williams signed off his 23^rd tournament with a first win against South Africa.

“It feels almost natural that Tom and I are on the same journey,” says the 27-year-old.

“We’ve been together since we were 12 years’ old really. We played for North Wales together when we were about 12 – we’ve had similar paths as we both signed for Ospreys at 18 and both started sevens at the same time and now, we’re both representing Wales in this GB squad,” says Morgan.

Williams now considers himself a sevens specialist and alongside Tom, feels it is their duty to perform well to encourage other Welsh players to aim for the world series.

“I think Jaz Joyce and Kayleigh Powell do as well – the four of us feel the responsibility inspiring the next generation of sevens players in Wales,” he says. “Even though Wales is not on the world series anymore there is still a chance for boys and girls from Wales to play on the circuit with GB.

“We both love sevens, it is such a good game and it’s probably not played enough in Wales. I’d love it for kids to be playing it more often because it is such a good game. It suits my rugby game more so than the 15s game.

“I have been in it [sevens] for so long and minutes on pitch I have definitely played more 7s than 15s. It suits me more than the 15s game, there is way more space, you get way more involvements. Even though the games are 15 minutes long I touch the ball more, I make more tackles and clear-outs in 7s than I would on the wing or at full back in 15s.”

Morgan’s sevens journey hasn’t been a smooth ride over the past couple of years with the pandemic wreaking havoc on the international sevens stage. When the world series was rebooted, there was no place for Wales initially but Morgan along with Tom and Luke Treharne were fortunate to pick up contracts with Great Britain before last year’s series saw Wales return from the third leg held in Malaga.

“It was quite weird,” says Morgan understatedly. “It started off as Team GB in 2021/22 because of Covid – there was no Wales team at that point – but for the 2022 season it was coming back to Wales and starting from scratch again.

“Me and Tom along with Luke [Treharne] were involved with GB and then when we came back into the Wales squad last January where we started from scratch. It was good to be involved in what was a massive challenge for us as teams had obviously been training and playing for a year before we had got together so we had two weeks to get going. It was a really exciting challenge but one that everyone enjoyed.”

Morgan, along with the rest of his teammates, had to endure a season where they knew come the end of the campaign, Wales would no longer exist on the world series no matter what they achieved on the field – a proposition some found tough to handle.

“It was really difficult – to be fair we didn’t know until midway through the season that that was going to be it. It was quite difficult to get your head around knowing that Wales weren’t going to be on the world series after that season.

“It was tough, especially for boys who had put so much time and effort into that Wales 7s jersey. All were hoping to leave the Welsh jersey in a better place than when we got it in the first instance. Playing that season knowing that it was the last one, we felt a responsibility for the jersey knowing that we’re probably not going to be on the world series again, but it also made us enjoy it as much as possible.”

A lasting memory for Morgan is the sweet taste of victory against South Africa in the final round of last year’s series.

“That was massive for us to have that scalp of South Africa,” he recalls. “They were going for the world series that tournament in LA. They were 100 per cent on their stuff but we got the win and it felt like the biggest win playing for Wales – even though we had previously had some big wins I had never beaten South Africa before so to make that a win in our last series was an extra special one.”

Having featured for GB in Hong Kong, Dubai and Cape Town this campaign, Williams’ has already had plenty of time to gauge how tough the competition is this season.

“The world series this year is so competitive and even though we got through to the quarters last time which meant we are seeding going into Hamilton, we still managed to get a very difficult pool with New Zealand, Australia, and Tonga and that’s probably as hard a group you are going to get. And that’s the challenge for us to get those wins

“I’d say the top 10 teams so far in three legs of the series you can’t put a favourite amongst any of them. We’ve had three different winners on the series so far – Australia, South Africa and Samoa – even the semi-finalists are different so you can’t call it at the minute.

“It is so competitive; the bottom six teams are having big wins against those above them – Spain beat New Zealand recently – Uruguay have had some really good results so there are no easy games.

“Qualifying for the Olympics is the end goal. That is going to be quite a challenge. The top four teams of the world series automatically go through, and France have already qualified as the hosts of the Olympics. If GB, Ireland or Spain don’t get top four it will mean we go into a continental tournament at the end of the year to decide the winner out of teams of Europe where one team will go through.

“Getting to the Olympics has been the goal for me for a few years – I didn’t manage it last time but that is the motivation, getting to the Olympics would be special.

“The challenge is basically before thinking about selection is to get there in the first place and as a squad that is all we are thinking about and that is not going to be an easy challenge at all.

“We know how good Ireland have been over the past couple of years – if we don’t qualify in the European competition at the end of this year we’ll have one more chance qualifying through a repechage tournament but we don’t want to get to that point.”