This summer, with Glasgow's Ibrox Stadium playing host, Rugby Sevens will make its fifth Commonwealth Games appearance.
Fans of the sport won't be too shocked to read that New Zealand have won gold on each of the previous occasions since 1998. As if dealt the sporting hand of fate, on Day 3 of the Games Scotland will face the All Blacks in the group stages of the competition.
While lips are being licked at the prospect of a haka v bagpipe battle-off, it seems only right to start this blog journey with a few facts and figures about the history of the ever-popular mini variant of Rugby Union's bigger brother.
Sevens has a long history, dating back to its first official tournament played in Melrose in 1883. With local clubs often short of money despite the determination to play, Melrose RFC player Ned Haig is credited with the idea of raising funds for his club by way of their hosting a seven-a-side tournament.
With matches reduced in length from 80 to 15 minutes, eight clubs participated, making the one-day competition a fledgling success. As Melrose lifted the winners' trophy against local rivals Gala, a new, faster, undoubtedly more expressive version of the sport was born.
The popularity of the format was contained within the Borders until 1921, when a tournament was staged outside Scotland for the first time. Held in North Shields in Tyne and Wear, the competition retained a Scottish flavour with the final being contested between Selkirk and Melrose.
Five years later, a Scottish London-based doctor founded the Middlesex Sevens which, due to its proximity with London's nearby urban population, had huge numbers of spectators flooding the turnstiles.
Over the following four decades, rugby union clubs across the north of England and Wales in time welcomed sevens with the same enthusiasm as those where its popularity had been firmly established.
The first officially sanctioned international tournament was played at Murrayfield as part of the Scottish Rugby Union's centenary celebrations in 1973. Due to the success of the format, three years later the sport found its global footing with the emergence of the Hong Kong Sevens, bringing with it more glamour to the bruising, cauliflower ear image of the game.
Thanks to the participation of stylish and fast-paced Australian and New Zealand teams along with the surging talent of Pacific Island nations Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, the sport was taken to a new level.
Today, the Hong Kong Sevens is considered the premier tournament on the International Rugby Board Sevens World Series, the annual competition having first kicked off in 1999. The IRB intended to form an elite-level travelling series between rugby nations, simultaneously developing the sevens format into a viable commercial product. Some 15 years on, the series continues to expand its reach, with growing popularity in less traditional rugby nations a feature of its success.
As of the 2013-14 season, the World Series circuit is composed of nine tournaments in eight countries, across five continents: Scotland, England, Australia, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Hong Kong, Japan and South Africa each host an event.
Interestingly, Glasgow Warriors' Scotstoun Stadium will host the penultimate leg of the season on the weekend of May 3-4. For fans the tournament will act as a taster in the build up to the Commonwealth Games, while providing a solid gauge of the Scottish team's performances with by then less than 12 weeks to go.
Info on tickets for the Emirate Airlines Glasgow Sevens can be found here (www.scottishrugby.org/tournaments-events/emirates-airline-glasgow-7s/tickets)
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