The Scotland Sevens squad were given an auspicious send off yesterday as they prepare to fly out to Las Vegas for the fourth leg of the HSBC Sevens World Series.
Stephen Gemmell and his players were joined at Murrayfield by coaches and youth players from their former clubs, as well as Scotland's minister for Sport and Commonwealth Games, Shona Robison.
The Scots will play their group matches over two days - the time difference will mean that all takes place on Saturday 25 January as far as a UK audience is concerned - starting against Fiji. Fixtures against New Zealand and Australia will then follow.
Gemmell could give Scott Wight, the Glasgow Warriors' stand-off, his first cap during the trip after he was drafted into the 12-strong playing squad. Russell Weir and Struan Dewar could also signal their returns following spells out with injuries.
Those comprise the facts of the squad, although they would seem diminished during the ceremony at Murrayfield yesterday. "This is the biggest year of our careers, so we want to make it as special as possible for the players," said Gemmell.
"Every stage of 2014 is extremely important. We have six more World Series events - including our own tournament in Scotstoun in May - [and] our players returning from injury may play in the Kings of the Sevens circuit and Legacy Sevens Series in order to gain game time. We will finish the year with a home Commonwealth Games in Glasgow."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article