Aussie Sevens turn to Stannard
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Experienced campaigner James Stannard has been called up to the Australian squad for the Glasgow leg of the Sevens World Series next week.
Australia Sevens head coach Michael O’Connor has named his 12-man squad that will travel to Glasgow for the penultimate leg of the 2013/2014 World Series and has made only one change to the squad that played in Hong Kong in March with James Stannard returning in place of the injured Alex Gibbon.
The 31-year old Stannard earned 31 Super Rugby caps between 2008 and 2012 playing 29 games for the Force and two for the Brumbies and made his Australia Sevens debut in 2010.
Ed Jenkins will continue to captain the side.
Tom Cusack, Lewis Holland, Allan Fa’alava’lau, Pama Fou and Shannon Walker are unavailable due to injury.
O’Connor said: "The final two legs of the IRB series gives us the chance to continue our improvement this year.
"We had our best result in Hong Kong in a decade and the team are fit and motivated to improve even more in Glasgow and ultimately go on to win a tournament."
Australia will take on hosts Scotland in the first game of the Glasgow Sevens, before taking on Spain.
They round off their Pool D campaign with a clash against the United States.
In a mouth-watering opening day, the top two sides in the World Series face off against one another in Pool A as New Zealand play South Africa.
Australian back Con Foley expects a tough challenge from the ever-improving USA side.
"They [USA] are a physical team that have shown great signs of improvement during the series.
"They always seem to give us a tough game, as do the Scottish.
"Scotland will obviously have the backing of their home crowd and it should be a good game that one!
"Spain haven’t had the best of seasons but they will be looking for one more big scalp before the end of the season and we don’t want to be on the end of that," Foley added.
Australia head into the last two rounds of the 2013/14 Sevens World Series fifth in the overall standings with 87 points.
New Zealand lead the series with 136 points, seven clear of the second-placed South Africa.
Fiji sit in the third spot with 112 points and England fourth (104 points).
Australia Sevens squad for the 2013/2014 Sevens World Series tournament in Glasgow:
Ed Jenkins, Con Foley, Jesse Parahi, Sam Myers, Paul Asquith, Peter Schuster, Greg Jeloudev, Cameron Clark, James Stannard, Nick Malouf, Tom Lucas, Afa Pakalani.
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