OLYMPIAN Abbie Brown will captain Team England’s rugby sevens side at the Commonwealth Games next month after they named their squad to compete in Australia.

Brown, who helped Great Britain reach the semi-finals at Rio 2016, will lead the squad of 12 players and one travelling reserve for the Gold Coast as the women’s competition makes its Commonwealth Games debut.

Emily Scarratt, who played in the 2017 Rugby World Cup final, has been named as vice-captain, with fellow Olympians Heather Fisher, Claire Allan, Natasha Hunt, Emily Scott and Amy Wilson Hardy also named in the squad. Holly Aitchison has been ruled out with a knee injury, though.

Fellow World Cup finalists Lydia Thompson, Alex Matthews and Megan Jones are included alongside Deborah Fleming and Jess Breach, who impressed with nine tries in her Sydney Sevens debut earlier this year, with Vicky Fleetwood named as travelling reserve.

England are in Pool B and will face Australia, Fiji and Wales and head coach James Bailey is in optimistic mood heading into the competition.

He said: “We are really looking forward to competing at the Commonwealth Games in April. As a new squad, the players and management have worked tremendously hard to bring this squad together and also transition the experienced 15s players back to sevens within in a short time frame.

“We have really benefited and developed a lot from competing on the World Series and at numerous invitational tournaments, against some of the best teams in the world, in order to be ready for this tournament.

“We have a lot of incredibly talented, world-class players in this side who are willing to work exceptionally hard for each other — and it’s that level of dedication and commitment that we’re hoping will bring success at the Games.”