ELIZABETH Musgrove has taken the fastest of tracks to success. This time last year, the 20-year-old sports-science student was not even playing rugby at any level. Now, she is a member of the Scotland Women’s Sevens team that won a European competition last weekend and has a good chance of claiming more silverware over the course of the summer.

It is a remarkable rise that shows how quickly talented athletes can progress in women’s rugby - a sport which, while now expanding quickly, had for years struggled for recognition in Scotland. Musgrove’s own talent has a lot to do with her accelerated promotion, of course, and as a talented judo player in her pre-teen years she has a background in contact sport that helped her adapt smoothly to the physical rigours of rugby. But rather than seeing herself as especially gifted, she believes her example can show others there is a place for them in the sport.

“I took it up properly in September last year, just going into my third year at Edinburgh University,” the back-three player said. “I’d done a little bit on and off at school in North Berwick, but we’d never had enough interest from girls to keep a team going.

“I’d done judo in the past, so I know how to fall and I don’t mind getting hit. There were a lot of people joining the uni team who were maybe a bit scared of the contact side, but they teach you how to do it all safely and there’s nothing to worry about.

“I just fancied something new. After giving up judo, I’d been doing athletics for about four years and fancied a new challenge, so I thought I’d do something for a bit of fun. All of a sudden I’m doing rugby six days a week and I’m really enjoying myself with a whole new bunch of people.”

That enjoyment, with a dash of surprise thrown in, began almost immediately for Musgrove after she started training with the university squad last September. If she expected to be given a few weeks to find her feet before being thrust into the firing line, she was very much mistaken.

“I turned up to training on the Monday and then we had the varsity match on the Saturday. Claire Cruikshank [coach of the university’s women’s team] was just like ‘You’re on the bench, come and join’, so it was head first into it all.

“I came on and scored with my first touch. It was a good game. I didn’t realise how good I would be.”

That last comment illustrates why Musgrove has been working with Scottish Rugby on promoting Be The Best You, the campaign which aims to attract more women and girls to the sport. There are similar aims behind Women’s Sport Week 2017, a UK-wide initiative which starts today.

While many new recruits will be happy just to play rugby socially, for beginners such as Musgrove who choose to take rugby that bit more seriously, a lot of hard work awaits. And in the case of the national sevens squad, that hard work is paying off. Having won last weekend’s Rugby Europe Trophy in the Czech Republic, the squad now go on to the next leg of the circuit in Hungary on 22 and 23 July. If they finish in the top two overall they will be promoted to next season’s Grand Prix series for the continent’s top nations.

“We’re confident, but we’ve got a lot we can work on for the next one,” she continued. “If you look at videos of us training from when the group first got together, the improvement is massive. We’ve had a lot of focus on defence, contact and breakdown; throw a bit of attack into that and I think we’ll continue to improve.

“We’re very organised and structured - that’s made a real difference. We’ve done a lot of work on our defence shape and I think that really showed in Ostrava.

“There’s been a long build-up of going to these European tournaments, and maybe doing OK with the results but there’s always been a possibility for more. With Scott Wight coming in” - Wight took over as head coach last month, the day after being a member of the Scotland Men’s squad that won the London Sevens - “everybody wanted to impress him. Training’s been really hard and maybe there’s some element of people feeling their position isn’t safe, which for a new person coming in is quite nice to know that he’s not already booked eight slots in the team.

“With him coming in, everybody has awakened to their potential a little bit and wants to do really well. He flew up 12 hours after winning at Twickenham to coach us, and he’s really putting a lot of effort into it.”

The more players Wight and his 15-a-side counterpart Shade Munro have to choose from, of course, the more likely it is that the improvement will continue. So what would Musgrove say to anyone wondering if rugby is the right sport for them?

“Just give it a go. I started rugby at 19, and I thought I was too old to start athletics at 16. There shouldn’t be such a stigma around trying new things.

“Just give it a go. Don’t be scared: it’s a very adaptable sport and you don’t have to go straight into full contact. And everyone’s really nice. I think compared to other team sports it’s got a really nice culture around it.”