Quick on his feet: Maurice Longbottom is making a big name for himself in sevens rugby. Credit:Kate Geraghty "Too small for rugby!" shouts the commentator. "Too small for rugby! Too small for rugby!" Yes, we get it, mate. He was too small for rugby but Longbottom is too quick when it comes to this form of the game. Sevens national coach Andy Friend was sitting on the bench alongside James Stannard when Longbottom scored the try. They looked at each other, dumbfounded. "Wow," they said at the same time.



Later, Friend pulled Longbottom aside. "Um, Moz," he asked, "What were you thinking?"

Longbottom grinned and then offered an explanation, speaking as fast as his feet. "I wasn't Friendy," Longbottom said. "I wasn't thinking. I went left and then I went, 'There's three of them, I'm in trouble, I better dance'. So I started to dance and two of them fell over so I thought, I've got the third one, I'll burn him." Jeff Hardy was in Sydney when Longbottom scored it. Hardy is the former St George rugby league back-rower from the 1990s (think Penfold's Wines and torpedo shorts) who runs Oztag competitions in South Sydney and also coached the Indigenous national team. He's watched Longbottom from an early age when he would embarrass senior players with his jinks and steps and swerves, and so much so that crowds would pack the sideline just to see him play. When Hardy saw video, he just shrugged. Seen it all before.

"I saw it," he says. "That's a regulation run for Moz. He's small but he's the best Oztag player I've ever seen. Everyone would come and watch him play because he can be going flat out, and then stop, change direction, step. To be able to stop, start, swivel hips, kick, regather, push through holes … he can just light it up from anywhere. I would think, 'Surely, he will crack it in rugby league'. He obviously tried but he never kicked on because they thought he was too small." When the Australian team arrived in Dubai last November for the first match of this year's series, coaches from other countries approached team manager Jarred Hodges. They'd heard the buzz and watched the YouTube clips. "Where have you found this bloke?" they asked. Living in Maroubra, playing A-grade rugby league for the Coogee Wombats and making ends meet as a carpenter alongside his mates. Where else would you find him? Longbottom has some story to tell.

He only played his first game of sevens two years ago. He was so disinterested in the sport he didn't watch it when it made its debut at the 2016 Rio Olympics. "I didn't even know it was a sport at the Olympics," he laughs. "I've never been into rugby. I couldn't watch the Wallabies for more than 10 minutes. I just find it boring – they kick the ball. But in sevens, they have a crack." Now, he's likely to be competing at an Olympics. He's on a three-year full-time contract with Rugby Australia that takes him up to Tokyo in 2020. More than that, he's considered one of the hottest talents on the world circuit. He's the reason you should watch the Sydney Sevens at Allianz Stadium, which start on Australia Day. "My mates are all blown away," Longbottom grins when asked about his rapid rise. "They're like me: chippies, plumbers, electricians. They say, 'Good on you, keep doing it'. If it wasn't for this, I'd still be chipping away." He's only 20 but it's taken a lot of work to get here.

He was born and bred in La Perouse in Sydney's south east, a proud Indigenous kid who dreamed of playing for South Sydney just like his mum's famous cousin, Bruce, did in the 1980s. He rose through the junior ranks at Souths but was dismissed as too small for senior footy. Along the way, he became an Oztag star. He was so proud of where he came from, and his people, that he would shun Australian jumpers so he could play for the Indigenous sides at tournaments.

At the same time, Hodges was watching. He could see a star sevens player in the making. For a few years, he invited Longbottom to play in the Ella Sevens, the annual tournament named after the famous Ella brothers who played that 15-man game Longbottom could barely watch. In 2016, he finally agreed. He stunned everyone and was then selected in the Lloyd McDermott Indigenous side to compete at the nationals in Adelaide in November that year. That's when Friend saw him. "I saw this little bloke dancing around and making good players fall over their own feet," Friend recalls. "He doesn't know what he's going to do, therefore the defence has no idea, but he's got this ability to break the line and in sevens it's all about that little line break."

The player Longbottom is most often compared to is Ben Barba, who also possesses that mesmerising footwork that confounds oppositions, that finds holes in defensive lines that few others can slip through. "I get that a lot," Longbottom says of the Barba comparison. "But I don't try to style myself on anyone. I just try to do my own thing. I just want to be myself and make a name in my own right." Barba never came from the ranks of touch footy or Oztag but other league stars like Benji Marshall and Shaun Johnson certainly did. You can see it in the way they play. Longbottom could never tread the same path simply because of his size. "I was in the training squads [for Souths] but never got a crack at games," he says. "I was just too small. They didn't actually say it to me, but it was along the lines of it. It pisses you off a bit. You're out there training your arse off and you don't get a go because of your size. It's not about the size of the person, but fight in the person. I've been told that my whole life. But I am absolutely loving this. If I had the opportunity now to go back to league, if I had a contract somewhere, I would say no. I am enjoying myself too much."

He stands at 165 centimetres and weighs about 70 kilograms but he's impressed his teammates with his determination in The Pit, the ominous name the sevens players call their wrestling sessions. "He would be one of the smallest players on the circuit," Friend says. "But that's what I like about him. We did some contact conditioning in The Pit, full wrestle and contest, and he didn't take a backward step. We threw him in with [105-kilogram forward] Jesse Parahi and Jesse had to work hard because if he didn't he would get flipped on his back." In many respects, sevens is the perfect fusion for a player like Longbottom. It has the contact of rugby league and agility needed to play Oztag. That is certainly the selling point for rugby as they try to convince young hearts and minds to give the abbreviated form of their sport a go. The physical side of sevens doesn't really matter if they can't catch you, though. The way Friend and Hodges see it, Longbottom's beauty isn't his speed but his ability to stop. "We always talk in sport about how quick people are," Friend says. "He's not our quickest player but he'd be one of our quickest to stop and change direction. Your ability to decelerate and change direction on a dime. That's his point of difference."

And perhaps where he has come from, the rugby league-playing chippy making it in rugby sevens. One day recently, Longbottom opened up the boot of his car. Hodges was with him and spotted the carpenter's tool belt. "What's that?" Hodges laughed. "Once you're a chippy, you're always a chippy," Longbottom said. Always chipping away.