With COVID-19 bringing the World Series Sevens to a halt, it's been almost seven months since Rhiannon Byers has been able to pull on the Australian jersey.
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The former Inverell Highlander has continued to train with the Australian squad, but it may still be a while before they can get back to competitive rugby with the Dubai and Cape Town rounds of the 2021 HSBC World Sevens Series set for November and December cancelled.
With no meaningful games on the horizon, the former Inverell Highlander has made the transition to the 15s, joining up with Randwick in the Jack Scott Cup, who were undefeated up until their 14-7 loss to Sydney Uni on Saturday.
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"It's been going really good," Byers said.
Having played with and against a number of the Randwick players through Aon Uni 7s and youth nationals, it made the choice easy.
Byers has slotted in at second row, and the transition from sevens to 15s took some getting used to.
"Obviously I'm jumping [in the lineouts] and fairly in the scrums and stuff but the contact and running the ball I'm pretty sweet with," she said.
"It was just more set piece stuff, just knowing where I had to go and where I needed to be technique wise and all that.
"But yeah that was like first game and then I've been pretty sweet ever since."
The cancellation of the World Series Sevens has come with some challenges, as the Australian sevens squad had to take a pay cut, however they did receive a big boost with the announcement of $2.2 million in AIS funding in July.
Byers and the Australian squad are currently training four mornings a week, with some changes to their normal training routines in place due to coronavirus, particularly around hygiene.
"Normally you team up as a two...that's your gym buddy for that week or that day. So you might do bench press or something like that and you'll be popping in and out between two people," Byers said.
"Obviously now you have to go by yourself, so that was a bit weird, just making sure you're trying to keep the hygiene up top notch."
Byers said there have been some challenges in staying motivated to train when there's no upcoming tournaments to work towards, but the playing group took the initiative in bringing in some changes to make sure the squad is getting the most out of training.
"We spoke to the coaches to change it up, so Wednesdays are our variety days," she said.
"So we go to a different suburb or a different scenery. We might do some boxing or we might do hill sprints or go to the sand dunes at Cronulla and just go to different places.
"Sort of just changing the scenery so we don't get too sour of training at the same place over and over again.
"It's been good that way. Our main footy days are Mondays and Fridays and we seem to be more focused after doing a different scenery or knowing that the next day is a different day, different area, so we've been training pretty well in that department."
With no upcoming tournaments, the squad is planning to play some internal games in around two weeks to help keep up that competitive mentality.
