Coach Phillips ready to take China on rugby road-trip to major tournaments

For former England rugby union player Ollie Phillips, taking up the role as coach of China's national seven-a-side rugby team is an enormous task, but he said he is ready to face this "sleeping giant".

The 39-year-old, who will lead the China 7s program, has his sights on securing qualification for the Olympic Games, World Sevens Series and winning the Asian Games, but Phillips acknowledges the journey will require progress one step at a time.

"I'm conscious that you can't just turn up and suddenly be successful, it has to be a stepping stone that builds all the way to that," Phillips told China Daily.

His focus is the Asian Series taking place in October and November, which will see his side head to Thailand, South Korea and Dubai.

Success in that competition will then lead to the Challenger Series and then ultimately give China the chance to qualify for the HSBC World Series for the first time in history.

China is a rugby minnow, and Phillips admitted that the sport has a mountain to climb as it is still not a particularly popular sport on the Chinese mainland, but he is optimistic about what can be achieved.

"Here is this sleeping giant of 1.4 billion people in China and I just need 12 people who can run," he said. "There is definitely a lot of room for improvement, such as creating more competition, but the facilities and sport programs that athletes have access to here is mind-blowing. The challenge now is for game understanding, competition and actually be able to play games."

Phillips said the challenge is one of the reasons he took up the job, adding, "if we could cultivate some form of structure and development pathway, then you unleash a beast, which is exciting."

Phillips has enjoyed success in rugby union in the United Kingdom, playing the 15-a-side game professionally for Harlequins, Newcastle Falcons, Gloucester Rugby and in France for Stade Francais, where he was voted Overseas Player of the Year in 2011.

Along with building the performance of the China team, Phillips will also have to navigate language and culture in order to shape a team who will be Olympic-ready.

At the moment he communicates with his team through a translator and he said the language barrier means he has to come up with alternative coaching styles to keep training interesting.

"It's about thinking how you can coach differently, how you can animate, use pictures, different signs and body language to get your message across, so it stays engaging and interesting," Phillips said, adding his new journey is also about personal development as well as team.

In 2016, World Rugby announced it was investing more than $100 million in making rugby more popular in China over 10 years. In 2015, there were 76,000 players in China. In 2016, the number had risen to 136,000.