On Wednesday morning the Scottish Rugby Union in collaboration with Welsh Rugby Union and English Rugby Union announced the discontinuation of Scotland’s individual participation in the World Rugby Sevens Series in favour of a collaborative Great Britain Sevens squad.
The move announced via a press release on scottishrugby.org confirmed that the move applied to both the Men’s and Women’s teams which would no longer be scheduled to appear in Hong Kong and Dubai respectively, later this year.
The release seemed to indicate that Olympic qualification for the GB team necessitated this.
The mandating of Olympic teams from the 2023/24 season means all three Unions acknowledge the importance of transferring to GB from the forthcoming campaign (2022/23) to embrace this new era with GB as the representative team on the World Series moving forward.
scottishrugby.org
The statement also indicated that fans of Scottish Rugby Sevens would still be able to see the team compete individually once every two years at the Commonwealth Games and World Cup events.
The move was labelled an “exciting opportunity” by the SRU but was immediately greeted with negativity on social media with, “is this a joke?” and “what a farce,” leading the responses to the SRU’s Twitter post.
How do you feel about this move? Excited to see more coherent British teams compete at the Olympics, or disappointed that the country that invented Sevens will no longer be featured at the World Series?
Let us know in the comments.
12 Responses
Muscular unionism in action.
The SRU statement makes clear this was ordered by World Rugby, or ‘mandated’ in their words to bring the World Series teams into line with the Olympic representative teams. It’s pretty shoddy by World Rugby IMO and totally unnecessary.
Will this impact any other countries other than the home unions ?
and the fate of Northern Ireland players?
are they forced to be in Ireland team or do they get to choose?
Olympic rules say a northern Irish athlete can choose either, but SRU, WRU and RFU not likely to be wanting to support that…
Why couldn’t there have been a Great Britain team AND a Scottish Team? Could give a platform for more players to be playing?!? Just have an agreement that if the Scots get called up to GBR, then they can choose. Simple…?
There is going to be a Scotland 7s team. World Rugby won’t let them compete in the World 7s Series though. So what’s the point really?
Will this free up budget ? As I recall the 7’s team cost a decent amount of money. How would you spend it ?
Spend it???? It is already allocated for the SRU top brass bonuses
So some budget freed up, is this what is going to be paying for the investment in the Women game, or will it filter down to Super 6 (guessing grassroots will see none of it).
I do not get the impression anyone if overly concerned . The Scottish 7’s rarely play in front of the Scottish rugby public , therefore I am not surprised with the apathy of this forum (which can be fairy vociferous) about the game.
A comment disgruntled about world rugby taking a hand, the others just seem to want to use the budget for other things.
Unfortunately the home of the game in Melrose, is not best placed in terms of it’s supporting infrastructure to hold a major world event and Hong Kong took the initiative a long time ago.
I think it would be worth considering how Scotland can capitalise on the roots of the game. Get a festival of sevens or similar, allow non rugby families to understand the game.
Such a short sighted decision. With only two pro teams the sevens squads were vital to the development of so many players. Clearly the SRU did not even bother to try and retain our sevens teams. What is the point of the SRU.
Did you ever see them playing live ? That is the problem, they exist in another country , they exist on the TV. As far as I am concerned they are 8 men short of a team, but as we started it we now have 7 men out of a job, so I do hope we invest in something to the greater good.