Hutchison targets finals breakthrough as Australia head to Valladolid with renewed belief

Henry Hutchison has called sevens rugby “bloody hard” and conceded Australia must solve their knock-out problem, with the Wallabies Sevens sitting third overall on the 2025-26 HSBC SVNS Series standings heading into the Valladolid leg of the World Championship.

Australia entered the season under significant change, with new head coach Liam Barry and a heavily refreshed squad. Despite the upheaval, the side has delivered podium finishes in Dubai and Perth and competitive showings in Vancouver and New York — regularly defeating South Africa and New Zealand in pool play. The problem has come later in the weekend.

“I feel like we’re probably the best team in the pool stages, but we just don’t quite back it up in a semi or a quarter,” Hutchison said. “We’ve been consistent and we’ve been making semi-finals but we haven’t been able, besides Dubai, to progress past that semi, so that’s a massive area of focus for us.”

Hutchison, Australia’s captain, most-capped player and leading try-scorer after a decade on the circuit, returned from elbow surgery with limited preparation time ahead of Hong Kong, admitting he felt a step behind. “I had just 12 days of training, and the game is so fast and so elite — two weeks of not catching a ball and not running with the team, I just felt a little step behind,” he said.

He believes results in Hong Kong have helped the squad make meaningful adjustments ahead of Spain, and is encouraged by the latest wave of new players integrating into the group. “The team’s playing really well, which makes it easy for me to play well because we can all just focus on our own backyard, doing our own job, which wasn’t always the case last season,” he added.

Hutchison was measured in his expectations, acknowledging that closing the gap in finals rugby is a process rather than a switch. “We’re also aware that it doesn’t happen overnight — the competition is just so tight and so close, and we’re still in a growth phase from a really new team last season that developed massively.”

Should Australia find a way through in Valladolid, Hutchison believes the squad is well positioned to carry momentum into the final series leg in Bordeaux and beyond.