Nick Royle returns to the England Sevens squad

Head coach Ben Ryan’s men top the table after a win at last month’s Emirates Airline Dubai Sevens and a second place finish at the Emirates Airline South Africa Sevens in George.

Nick Royle comes into the 12-man squad in place of the injured Ollie Lindsay-Hague (Harlequins) for the tournaments at Wellington (February 4-5) and Las Vegas (February 12-13).

The 27-year-old former Widnes Vikings and Warrington Wolves wing is a contracted England Sevens player who has been appearing alongside 2003 World Cup winner Jason Robinson for Fylde this season.

Sevens legend Ben Gollings leads the England team looking to extend his world record tally of 2,455 series points when the No.1 seeds kick off the NZI Sevens with pool matches against Wales, the USA and the Cook Islands.

They will be out to emulate their victory at Wellington in 2009 when the hosts were beaten in the final by Isoa Damudamu’s late try and Gollings’s clinching conversion.

Ryan is impressed with the work done so far in training on and off the field.

He said: “We’ve been very critical of what we’ve done in the first two tournaments and it’s important that self-analysis has taken place. We’re still very disappointed that we didn’t take out New Zealand in the final at George.

“We’ve been back in training for two weeks now and we’ve used that time to really work hard on fitness and the players have come out of it with some outstanding scores measured in fitness tests and our GPS data.

“Now we go to a tournament at Wellington where we’ve had a bit of success in the last few years and what happens there and in Vegas has often been a turning point in the series.

“We don’t want to give up being top of the pile and everybody will be looking at what we’ve done so far, so we’ll examine what we can do to adjust a few things over the next few weeks.”

England Squad
Greg Barden (Royal Navy)
John Brake (England Sevens)
Dan Caprice (England Sevens)
Chris Cracknell (England Sevens)
Isoa Damudamu (British Army)
Ben Gollings (England Sevens, captain)
Simon Hunt (Birmingham & Solihull)
Dan Norton (Bristol Rugby)
Tom Powell (England Sevens)
James Rodwell (England Sevens)
Nick Royle (England Sevens)
Mathew Turner (England Sevens)

HSBC Sevens World Series standings(top five):

1 England 44pts,

2 New Zealand 40,

3 Samoa 36,

4 Fiji 32,

5 South Africa 24