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Rugby - Ex-Fiji coach Ryan happy to be back outside the box

Ben Ryan (C) speaks to players after losing to England during the Cup semi-final at the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament, as part of the Sevens World Series, in Hong Kong March 30, 2014. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu (Reuters)

By Mitch Phillips LONDON (Reuters) - Fiji's magnificent victory in the first Olympic Games Rugby Sevens tournament in Rio de Janeiro this year was fitting reward for the islanders' ebullient play but almost certainly could not have been achieved without their English coach Ben Ryan. Everybody in the game had long admired the off-the-cuff talent Fiji brought to the sport but few saw the problems that ensured victories were less frequent than they should have been. When Ryan took over in 2013, following six successful years coaching the England Sevens, he quickly realised that guiding the players on the pitch was only a small part of the challenge. "When I got there I made sure I took time to watch, to understand the environment and didn't want to rush into any decisions," Ryan, who left the job after the Olympics, told Reuters in an interview at the World Rugby Conference on Monday. "But it didn't take very long at all to realise they weren't fit enough, weren't eating right and had no understanding of nutrition, so that was the first thing I started changing." Less obvious for Ryan were the cultural traditions and behind-the-scenes machinations that led to a bizarre and disruptive selection policy. "Coaches in Fiji avoided any sort of conflict so they wouldn't talk to a player if they’d dropped him," he said. "Before I got there Fiji won the Gold Coast Sevens and then 11 players got dropped for the following tournament - and nobody got told why. "Players were being picked as favours, for them or a cousin or uncle or something. Unsurprisingly, players didn't have too much faith that working hard in training or performance in matches would count for something. "There were eight selectors when I got there but I never saw them at training or at a tournament so I got rid of them." Earning the right to make that sort of decision was another challenge for Ryan, who had to build relations not only with the country's Rugby Union but with Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who effectively decided funding issues and backed his authority. "You go through all those things to build the foundations and you get buy-in from the players," said Ryan, who also earned their respect when they discovered he had spent the first four months of his job unpaid but never mentioned the matter. "The first season it was only me - with some help from a physio. It was very tough but it actually helped me in keeping it simple," he added. KICKING COACH One key addition he was able to make was the appointment of kicking coach Jeremy Manning "also for pennies". "No other team had one," he said. "Kicking is so important to deliver an accurate restart to try to win the ball back. It seemed obvious to me and I'll be interested to see who has them this season," said Ryan. Working in an environment so different from his previous job with England at the richest, most heavily-staffed union in the world also enabled Ryan to rediscover a side of himself that had, without him realising, drifted away. "I got my job with England because they thought I was a young and upcoming coach who was creative and was a bit of a free thinker," said Ryan, a former scrumhalf who developed his coaching skills as a schoolmaster. "I spent seven years there and, eventually, I had been so chipped away at - the machine got me - that I ended up as a bad version of me. "It was only in Fiji where I got the ability to take a breath and go back to being the coach I was when I started - back outside the box. I’m still very keen to learn but I have a very clear philosophy and I’m very clear on my standards." Those standards transformed Fiji from a flash-in-the-pan outfit to the dominant force in the game, culminating in that memorable day in Rio when they beat Britain in the final to win the country's first-ever Olympic medal. Made a Companion of the Order of Fiji and given a plot of land as a reward, 45-year-old Ryan said his proudest achievement was being the first Fiji coach not to have been sacked after leaving the role by choice after the Olympics. He is now enjoying the fruits of his labour as an ambassador with Sevens Circuit sponsor HSBC but, as he showed by attending Sunday's World Player of the Year black-tie dinner in his traditional Fijian sulu skirt, he hardly sold his soul for the corporate dollar. Ryan has strong feelings, too, about how the game can help Fiji, and fellow rugby-playing islands Tonga and Samoa, whose players routinely ply their trade around the world, often switching nationalities, to earn money unavailable at home. World Rugby is discussing the possibility of extending the residency period for such a switch from three to five years but Ryan says that will have no impact. "The key thing that needs to be done is to plant a professional Super Rugby team in the islands," he said, adding that such a plan is already some way towards fruition. "All the young guys will come and you’ll have academies in the islands and that will solve 80 percent of the problem overnight." (Editing by Ken Ferris)