ONLY days after Scotland won the London Sevens tournament, the future of the national squad as an independent entity has been put in doubt by news of a possible merger with England and Wales.
It is thought that the integration of the three teams into a Great Britain Sevens squad would not be put into practice for next season, but even the threat of unification for season 2018/19 and thereafter is sure to provoke a furious reaction from Scottish supporters. It is only two years since a threat from within Scottish Rugby to disband the sevens team was thwarted, and Sunday’s win at Twickenham was seen as a vindication of the squad’s continued existence – particularly because in the quarter-finals the team became the first representative Scotland side of any description to beat New Zealand.
Combining the three countries into one side would help World Rugby’s plan to cut the number of teams in sevens’ World Series from 16 to 12. It would also assist Team GB in its preparation for the Olympics by having a squad that played together regularly.
On the other hand, it would do very little to give Scottish players regular exposure to the highest level of the abbreviated game. At last year’s Olympic tournament in Rio, only two Scottish men – Mark Bennett and Mark Robertson – and no Scottish women were selected for the Great Britain squad.
The story was broken yesterday by Sky Sports under the headline ‘England, Wales and Scotland Sevens to permanently combine as Great Britain’. The presentation of the merger as a fait accompli is thought to be premature at least, and a spokesperson for Scottish Rugby insisted that preparations for next season were continuing as normal.
“We are preparing for next year’s World Series, Commonwealth Games and World Cup Sevens competitions,” the spokesperson said. “We will not be commenting further at this time.”
John Dalziel has just taken over as Scotland sevens head coach from Calum MacRae, who is moving to become defence coach at Edinburgh. The process of contracting players for next season is also well under way, and that and the new coaching appointment strengthens the impression that a merger will not go ahead next season.
Even if the three unions involved agree that it should proceed in time to begin in the autumn of 2018, however, a sustained campaign is likely to be fought.
That was the case two years ago when some senior figures within Murrayfield proposed the abolition of the sevens squad, primarily for financial reasons. An adverse public reaction combined with other individuals within the governing body to ensure that the team carried on.
If a merger did go ahead on the basis suggested in the Sky story, it would be the first time that any Scottish national team had been subsumed into a British squad for a tournament in which it had previously competed independently. In time it could even lead to a calling into question of a separate 15-a-side team. Fear of such a threat within football has led the Scottish Football Association to resist any moves to merge teams, with the result that the GB men’s squad at the London Olympics included only English and Welsh players.
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