Scotland will try to banish the memory of a poor second day in last weekend's Glasgow Sevens at Scotstoun when they compete in the final leg of this season's World Sevens Series at Twickenham today and tomorrow.
What promised to be an exciting season for Scotland's sevens squad has become one characterised by failure to reach a single Cup quarter final in any of the eight tournaments to date. Even with two Edinburgh professionals, Jim Thompson and John Houston, brought into the squad for last weekend Scotland fell short of making the breakthrough they wanted.
Of course it was asking a lot for Thompson and Houston to adjust so quickly to the different physical requirements of sevens rugby and the hope is that Edinburgh pair will be up to speed this weekend.
For the London Sevens, Thompson has pulled out to be replaced by Andrew Skeen of Melrose. Scotland, also, will be without flanker Struan Dewar and winger Mark Robertson, who picked up injuries last weekend, and who are replaced the South African born Byron McGuigan and GHA winger Rory Hughes.
Scotland coach Graham Shiel, however, will use Hughes as a forward. "We see him in the longer term as a forward in sevens. He's a strong player with good skills and he seems to relish the collisions in the contact area" said Shiel.
Scotland play Australia first up and then, for a second successive tournament, play South Africa, who edged out Scotland in Glasgow by a single score. "We'll try to put pressure on South Africa as we did last week. But we know that because they train together so much as a professional squad, they're tactically astute but I believe we can outscore them in terms of tries" predicted Shiel.
Scotland's final pool game is against Portugal, a team that in the past has caused problems for the Scots. With focused performances Scotland could qualify for the Cup quarters but statistics would suggest otherwise. The challenge for Scotland today is to buck a set of bad results this season and show that they can compete at the top level.
Scotland squad: Colin Gregor (Scotland 7s), Andrew Turnbull (Scotland 7s), Byron McGuigan(Scotland 7s), Rory Hughes(GHA), James Fleming (Scotland 7s), John Houston (Edinburgh Rugby), Andrew Skeen (Melrose), Michael Fedo (Team Northumbria), Ross Miller (Glasgow Hawks), Sean Kennedy (Stirling County), Adam Ashe (Stirling County), Scott Riddell (Stewart's Melville)
Pool A New Zealand, Argentina, Russia, Kenya
Pool B England, Samoa, France, USA
Pool C Fiji, Wales, Spain, Zimbabwe
Pool D Australia, South Africa, Scotland, Portugal
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