How Ryan dragged England Sevens up from rock bottom

Yet before appreciating how far he and his team have come, it is necessary for Ryan to reflect on how disastrous things were.

“We hit rock bottom in 2008,” said the genial 41-year-old whose down-to-earth attitude is in complete harmony with Stuart Lancaster, head coach of the senior England side.

“It unfolded pretty dramatically in Australia and I went and told Rob it wasn’t working, that we weren’t fit for purpose — sometimes I was meeting players at check-in who I had never seen before.

“We needed help and I thought it could be about to fold as we couldn’t give sevens the attention and resources it demanded.

“Then the IRB told us to hang on in there as they were bidding for Olympic status and our departure would have been a huge blow. So we got more resources, more success and the rest is history.

“Needing to stay in the programme for the Olympic bid was the start and it snowballed from there.”

And don’t be fooled that sevens is just a run-around at the end of the regular season. Ryan laughs at the thought that the players such as Chris Ashton and Ben Foden could be parachuted into a potential Team GB side ahead of Rio.

He now has 19 astonishingly fit full-time professionals who spend 130 days abroad and 80 more in training camps, flying some 80,000 miles on 30 economy-class flights around the world.

Flyers such as Dan Norton and Matt Turner — scorer of 75 tries between them last season — have rejected approaches from Aviva Premiership clubs, while players such as captain Rob Vickerman have left the XV code to return to sevens.

Wages are now only slightly below those Premiership sides can offer and when the 12-man squad warms up on the beach in Australia this weekend, it will not be hard to think they have made the right decision.

“The job description for a sevens player is pretty enticing,” said Ryan. “You go around the world in a very successful small team that is striving to be No1 in the world and then there’s an Olympics, a World Cup and Commonwealth Games to compete in.

“Players are deciding early now that they want to play sevens and more and more Premiership guys are putting their hands up saying they want to come across.”

Yet the lure of the Olympics cannot be overstated. Team GB will qualify if a Home Nations side are ranked in the world’s top four at the end of the 2014-15 season and a coach — almost certainly Ryan — will be appointed to bring a team together.

Others are prioritising the Olympics already — Holland now has a full-time women’s team, for example — but Ryan will have his work cut out if he does get the job.

He adds: “With Great Britain you can look at it in two ways; it can be a real pain and very hard to get a team together in a short space of time, or it’s a real challenge and if they get it right it could be very successful.

“I’m a glass half-full kind of guy so I like to look at the latter option and I’m going to bash some heads together and try to sort it out.

“This summer we went to see Bradley Wiggins in the time-trial and it was fantastic. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?”