‘The vibe is really cool’ – Abbie Brown on Lightning, GB Sevens, and jumping between the two

When she’s not captaining her nation to Olympic qualification, Abbie Brown is providing Loughborough Lightning with a last line of defence at fullback. There is, perhaps, no player who better balances the twin pressures of playing in the PWR and running out regularly for GB Sevens, so I caught up with her ahead of the league season kicking off to find out how she, and her team, were doing.

“The vibe going on at the moment at Loughborough is really cool,” Brown told me when we caught up just before the start of the PWR season. “We've got a new head coach in Nathan Smith, and he's been real good for the girls. I think he's really tested the girls in a different way.

"It’s definitely been an interesting time [through pre-season and the Allianz Cup] but it's super cool seeing the rugby ability there is in such a young group. I've kind of been a little bit around it with doing a bit of skills training with them. Doing my own running alongside training, I’ve been dipping in and out as much as possible and trying to get involved as and when I can. It’s a really good group which always helps.”

Part of the new vibe at Lightning is down to a fresh voice at the top. Former Director of Rugby Rhys Edwards, whose focus was always firmly on Loughborough’s ability to develop and nurture players, has moved on to a new role with Pentathlon GB. Nathan Smith has stepped in and immediately changed the perspective. This is now a club that, while it is mindful of the importance of developing for the future, also wants the best possible outcome today.

“I think it's always different when you have a new coach come in and they have their own perspective on things, you get fresh eyes on something that you've been looking at in the same way for the last couple of years, and that means they can bring a different opinion.

"It tests you and challenges you as a player. We’re kind of going through the same situation with GB Sevens. It just challenges you as a player to come at things from a different angle and then you're like ‘Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Let's try that. Let's experiment with this. Let's see where we can go with it!’ If you get buy-in with the players then you're pretty much there, aren't you? It's exciting times. I'm really looking forward to seeing where we go with this season considering how well we've done in the cup. How can we go forward with a super exciting season ahead of us!”

Loughborough stumbled out of the gates in the opening weekend of the season with a loss away at Saracens and then a bye week, but this weekend saw them show some of what Brown alluded to as they made the short trip to Leicester and won handily against the Tigers.

For Brown though a trip to Largs and some unseasonable Scottish sun was followed by trips to Malaga and, most recently, Dubai.

“It’s been really fun getting back into sevens fitness, sevens contact, all those different things. The training weeks have been really heavy, the guys have tested us! We had two really heavy days almost replicating game days. So we’d go out to the pitch, have an intense session, take an hour break and then back into another heavy session. Stop for lunch and then into the gym in the evening. We did that back-to-back. It was tough on the body but also so good to be back and we had a couple of new faces, which was really exciting.”

With Meg Jones stepping away from sevens for the immediate future to focus on getting more Red Roses caps Brown has also taken on all the captaincy duties that the duo previously shared. Of course, Jones may opt to return in the summer as the team have qualified for the Olympics. Now all eyes are on Paris and every training session or game in the lead-up is an opportunity to sharpen tactics, try new ideas and work on combinations.

Having the 2024 Olympics just a short train ride or flight from home means the prospect of a louder-than-usual support base for the team, something Brown sees as a definite positive. “It’s almost like a home from home, Paris is so close that hopefully we'll get a lot of home support going out there or even just being able to watch it at a reasonable hour. So much of the time we’re halfway across the world and our games are on at 3 am, so it being so much easier for people to follow will be great”.

For now, though, it’s jumping back and forth between the intensity of sevens and the impact of 15s and Brown knows just how tough that can be. “For me, it’s all about the running. 15s is more of an endurance game, whereas sevens is all about repeatability. The running sessions we do are so hard but they’re over very quickly. Everything is built around time, so you run all out for a period of time and then rest for 45 seconds, get up and go again. It’s all game-specific.

“Obviously you don’t really experience that in 15s, it’s more stop-start. You break into units for focused training. You spend a lot more time on your feet and I really noticed that in pre-season…. My body felt really tired because I’m not used to being on my feet for so long.

"I’m used to working at a higher intensity but for much shorter periods of time. So it's definitely different from a fitness point of view and the contact element is so different too. There's so much more space so contact happens at a higher pace in sevens.

"You have to tackle differently too, because there’s so much opportunity for opponents to get around you. I’ve counted myself lucky to be able to do some skills coaching with Lightning and keep involved while doing my own running and fitness for sevens, because as much as the fitness and physical elements differ those skills are completely transferable. I’m not an individual athlete and don’t ever want to be, so to be around and join in with the girls has been really nice.”