In July 2024, the sevens rugby tournament lit up Stade de France at the Paris Olympics. France’s Antoine Dupont did things that felt written by a Hollywood script writer, and the Canada and USA women provided their own blockbuster endings.
Less than 18 months later, however, in Ireland and Britain at least, the expected golden sevens afterglow has been underwhelming. The game is in a strange place.
Ireland has pulled the plug entirely on its men’s sevens programme, setting off a furious player response. Great Britain scaled back to part-time squads, after the governing body the RFU withdrew funding. The ‘Olympic wave’ many had expected to surf into a bright new era fizzled into a ripple.
And, then, there’s Scotland. While the RFU and IRFU tiptoed backwards, Scotland stepped forwards with the kind of conviction that feels both old-school and bold.
This is, after all, the nation that invented Rugby Sevens, a legacy born of Melrose butcher Ned Haig, who carved the sport out of 15s like a prime cut, and created a global sensation.
The Scots’ response to the post-Olympic malaise is simple: dust off the original template and start again.
This is not some misty-eyed heritage project. Scotland has relaunched its men’s sevens team full-time and, in doing so, taken over where Great Britain Sevens left off. The new setup is based at Oriam, Scotland’s high-performance nerve centre in Edinburgh, where a core group of contracted players will train, compete, and build a pipeline that makes sense.
Players from Scotland, Wales, and England are eligible, but Scots will wear most of the jerseys. The women’s programme will ultimately shift north too, relocating from a current base in Wales to join the new all-weather Scottish hub.
Two heavy-hitters and out-and-out sevens rugby disciples are steering the ship: Ciaran Beattie, GB director of rugby and men’s team head coach, and David Nucifora, the former Irish performance mastermind who had resurrected the Ireland Sevens programme, taking his team to HSBC SVNS podiums and the Olympics.
Intensity
Having crossed the Irish Sea and being installed as Scottish Rugby’s performance guru, Nucifora is one of the sport’s great system-builders, and he’s not shy about calling out Ireland’s decision to axe their men’s team after so much success as “naivety and ignorance.”
In his view, sevens rugby is an unrivalled pressure cooker: travel, intensity, rapid-fire decision-making, resilience forged by repetition.
“Once you’ve learnt to play this game,” he says, “you carry that with you for the rest of your rugby career. Sevens is the game of ultimate consequence, it is one of the best development tools for so many reasons, both on and off the pitch.
“Young players learn to travel, to recover, to prepare — not just once, but five or six times on a weekend — to mentally get themselves up for games.”
For a nation with a smaller player base, that’s gold dust. Scotland has only two fully professional men’s teams, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and none in the women’s game.
Sevens offers depth, exposure, and opportunities that 15s can’t manufacture all on its own. What some unions treat as a detour, Scotland sees as a fast lane.
“In small player-based countries,” says Nucifora, “you have to create competition within, to create competition for contracts, competition for positions. The more players you can get in the shop window the better for the pathway.”
Beattie agrees, laughing off the idea that sevens isn’t that pathway. “The argument that sevens can’t help develop top players simply isn’t true. It serves a huge purpose.”
And the stats don’t lie: one in four Scotland men’s sevens players went on to play 15-a-side international rugby. More than 50 capped athletes owe their careers to that shorter format.
Evidence
The global historical evidence of sevens’ influence reads like a Hall of Fame roll call: All Blacks Jonah Lomu, Christian Cullen, and Ardie Savea; Springboks Cheslin Kolbe, Kwagga Smith, and Kurt-Lee Arendse.
Fiji unleashed upon the world modern stars Semi Radradra and Josua Tuisova after they tore up the sevens circuit. And the sport’s original magician, Waisale Serevi, still evangelises and grows the game decades after his Hong Kong heroics.
In the women’s game, the impact of sevens is even more obvious, with recent World Cup successes built on the Sevens breeding ground.
England stars Ellie Kildunne, Alex Matthews, Meg Jones and Emily Scarratt; Canada’s Sophie de Goede and Asia Hogan-Rochester; Springboks Nadine Roos and Zintle Mpupha; New Zealand’s breakthrough sensation Braxton Sorensen-McGee, and, the greatest of them all, Portia Woodman-Wickliffe. The list of XVs stars who were forged in sevens goes on and on.
What about Abi Burton’s extraordinary journey from near-fatal illness to World Cup winner, which began with GB Sevens? And global megastar Ilona Maher? Every one of them was born in the beautiful chaos of the sevens circuit.
Sevens doesn’t just find superstars. It manufactures them.
Ambition
While Scotland’s move might seem nostalgic, it is vital. In 1883, Ned Haig didn’t shorten rugby for sentiment, he did it to innovate, and create opportunity. Some 140 years later, Scotland is once again turning the crank, not to launch a sport, but to rejuvenate it.
Beattie will run the GB men’s squad. The women’s programme will be anchored by Jonathan Hooper – “an encyclopedia of the women’s game”, according to Beattie. He’ll be joined by England World Cup-winning attack coach Lou Meadows.
The men’s side has clarity; the women’s side has ambition and will rapidly sharpen its edges.
The new structure of the HSBC SVNS gives time to the British men and women to adapt to the cut-and-thrust of elite level sevens rugby.
The first six events are preludes to the World Championships in Hong Kong, Valladolid and Bordeaux – there’s time for the squads and players to develop.
Don’t expect British teams to be contesting medals straight away. This is a serious long-term project, one that Ciaran Beattie hopes will not only keep Great Britain in the top tier and Olympic frame – but also serve Scotland rugby in the future.
So, once again, Scotland proves itself the nation ready to innovate and compete – and, all going as planned, to pull sevens rugby into a future that suddenly feels exciting again.