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Australian sevens coach Andy Friend says he would not pick Jarryd Hayne in his squad for the Rio Olympics even if he was approached by he and his management. 
And Friend has encouraged Fiji coach Ben Ryan to be "his own man" when he selects his squad for Rio as it would be "demoralising" for Hayne to take a current player's position.
Friend and the Australian squad found out about Hayne's shock decision to make a bid for the Fijian Olympic team after the Paris Sevens event, with one person asking: "Is this for real?"
It appears likely Hayne will line up against Australia in a pool match at 2.54am on Sunday morning (AEST) at the London Sevens event, something Friend said the Thunderbolts would be looking forward to.
But Friend, who made the tough decision recently to punt Quade Cooper from the sevens setup because of a lack of preparation, said it was a significant risk picking Hayne for the upcoming tournament, let alone the Olympic Games.
"I just think this close out it's a big call especially for a team like Fiji," Friend said. "If you had a team like Portugal or someone who hasn't got a great depth of player talent, you might say, 'oh well, that's a talking point for their side'. If it happens it'd be big.
"Ben's his own man so there's no doubt that he's not going to be forced into anything. He's a world-class coach."
Asked whether Hayne would get a spot on the current Australian team, Friend wasn't so sure. 
"I'm very comfortable with what we've got," he said. "If it happened six months ago of course you'd be interested. But my experience is this is such a specialised game and you have to have played the game.You have to have had the conditioning in order to play the game and for me there wouldn't be enough time [for Hayne] to get that. It has to come down, in my opinion as a coach, to performance." 
Friend said even if Hayne were to be picked it would not be fair on the Fijian players who have been training hard for months to get a chance at winning their country's first Olympic medal since their first Games in Melbourne 60 years ago.
"Up until today I didn't realise he was Fijian," Friend said. "I don't know his background in playing sevens, but I've never heard of him as a sevens player. 
"The boys who have been on this circuit and been putting in for year after year, that massive carrot of the Olympics is sitting there in front of them and for them to be able to get so close to it and somebody from outside the sport just to lump in and go to that [Olympic Games] would just demoralise a lot of people, so I reckon that's the other big risk with him."
Friend believes Hayne does possess certain skills needed to be a high quality sevens player, but feels his fitness could not possibly be up to scratch. 
"It's one thing to have the skill and the vision on a rugby field, it's another thing to be able to do it when your heart rate is doing 220 beats a minute and your legs are full of lactic acid," Friend said. "We'll watch it with interest because he's a phenomenal athlete and see how he goes."