Mark Bennett knows he made a sacrifice of his place in Scotland’s pecking order and the start of Glasgow’s season to fulfil his Olympic dream, but he’s ready to get back to the day job with the Warriors this week.
The Scotland centre won silver with Team GB in Rio – an achievement he still can’t quite believe – but to do so he had to pull out of a Scotland tour and knew it would mean a late start to his domestic season.
But the medal secured, he feels the experience will benefit the Warriors and Scotland on both sides of the ball now that he’s back for Friday’s visit of Ulster to Scotstoun.
“Sevens really sharpens you up skill-wise and fitness-wise, and I feel like I’m in a good place,” he said. “I got back into training two weeks ago and it’s gone well, so I’m just looking forward to hitting the ground running.
“I just feel my skills have been sharpened. Sevens is a real test of your skills at the top level, there’s no hiding place – which means everything had to be on point, and I just feel good coming back in.”
The other aspect that he feels may have improved is one area where the talented centre has been criticised on – his defence.
“To win a medal was unexpected, we threw a team together ten weeks before the tournament, so realistically we probably shouldn’t have been able to get anywhere close to where we did,” he said.
“But it was a squad of talented boys, and everyone clicked at the right moment. And defence won us that medal, 100 per cent.
“Our whole mantra was to be brave in the way we try to play the game, throwing the ball about, and in the build-up tournaments we were scoring tries for fun, but also conceding a few.
“Then when we turned up in Rio it was the complete opposite. We couldn’t score tries like that against the better defences, but we were scoring enough because our defence was so good.”
He noted the difference in himself in the brief 25 minutes he had off the bench for Glasgow in the loss to Cardiff Blues last Friday night.
“Everyone’s asking me how has it been adapting coming back to fifteens from sevens, and all I can say is it’s a hell of lot easier that going the other way,” he said.
“I’m a lot more comfortable defensively because it’s good to have only five yards of space to deal with rather than 25 yards.
“I’m confident if I’m picked. It’s about what I’ve done the last four or five years, and I feel like I am fitter after the summer with the Sevens – probably the fittest I’ve been.”
In the meantime, he won’t ever forget his Rio experience, on or off the pitch.
“First day we’re walking through the village and pass the Williams sisters and Martin Del Potro, then we saw Usain Bolt at dinner, Yohan Blake, just seeing all these people was pretty awesome in itself,” he recalled.
“The team GB spirit was just incredible. After day one we were walking through the village and everybody was stopping us to say well done, and you’re thinking `I’ve never spoken to you before, but thanks’. That was pretty cool.”
