Powell joins England's 12-strong squad for the Commonwealths

Old Albanian forward Tom Powell has backed the England rugby sevens side to be among the medals in Delhi.

The 24-year-old is part of the team that will battle Australia in the opening Commonwealth Games fixture.

"Hopefully we'll get through the group stages on the first day pretty comfortably," he said.

"On the second day anything can happen, if we turn up and play as we can then I hope we will come home with a medal of some description."

England will also face their other group opponents, Uganda and Sri Lanka, on 11 October, with the top two going through to the quarter-finals.

Powell, who has represented his country at under-16 and under-18 level, is aware of who they will have to overcome if they are to take gold.

"The Kiwis and Australia have put a lot of their XVs superstars in, as it were," he added.

I think it would have to be something pretty catastrophic to stop Team England going out there Tom Powell

"So they'll be challenging and then there's the South Africans, and the Welsh and Scottish will be strong as well.

"It's a tough tournament but we've been training hard for 12 weeks and we'll give it a good shot."

With preparations for the Games as a whole in disarray, following reports of poor conditions in the athletes' village, the former Cambridge number eight is fully expecting to fly to Delhi as planned.

"I'm pretty confident, I think it would have to be something pretty catastrophic to stop Team England going out there," he said.

"But that's for management to decide, we'll just keep our heads down and focus on our jobs."

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