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Welsh boss Paul John is confident that having core contracted players in his squad will enable the national Sevens side to readily improve.

Training camps for the new IRB World Sevens Series season is set to start for the Welsh next week and John, speaking on the WRU podcast, is excited to what lays ahead.

“It’s great with the agreement and the ability to have some core contracted players in the squad. Having a group of players we can consistently work with on the international stage. The remit of Sevens is still to develop players for international rugby and that will always be the case”.

“Last year we used around 34-35 players, so we had to start from scratch a lot of the time. Consistency of selection gives consistency of performance,” added John.

The World Cup Sevens holders have agreed that for the first time player release would be officially sanctioned by a contract to agree the release of regional squad players for Wales international Sevens duty.

The four regions will release up to two players each to a core Wales Sevens squad which could be made up to 10 players with some included from other leagues or structures. Some players will be contracted for all eight legs of the IRB World Sevens Series, whilst others will only be available for four of the tournaments.

It's a formula which as worked wonders for current IRB Sevens champions South Africa and is also being replicated by other countries in a bid to improve.

“The key factor for the World Cup was that we had nine players who had been in Wellington and San Diego in the weeks before the tournament, that gave us a good three weeks together giving us plenty of confidence”.

John is hoping that cutting his player base will help his sides reach more cup quarter-finals and semi-finals at the various tournaments.

The side only reached the last four on one occasion last season and John is keen to see his side in the latter stages of the major competitions on a more regular basis.

“Once we can get the core group together we can really hope to start moving up the rankings. Once you get past the quarter-finals, like at the World Cup, anything can happen”.