Relaunched full-time Sevens squad will develop young talent

Published on Wednesday 30 March 2011 19:25

THE SRU is planning to re-launch a full-time dedicated sevens team as a tool to help to develop the best young players for professional rugby.

Graham Lowe, the SRU Director of Performance Rugby, revealed the move as part of the new strategic review, which is still being finalised and expected to be launched next month. He praised the under-18 team for beating England on Sunday but stated that the under-20s Six Nations whitewash was a huge disappointment.

He said: "We've got a number of initiatives that are currently in place, working around the regions through the early part of this year making sure our national age-grade programmes are connecting with our best coaches to make sure they get the skill development that they need.

"Those initiatives take time. In the under-20s we are looking at how they prepare and how we focus them on the junior world cup and, in terms of that, we have players going to New Zealand with the Macphail Scholarship.

"We need outcomes in terms of performance and results, but it's about getting the best out of the players that are available to us. We could make excuses about the size of our rugby population and all that, but the important fact for us is that the things we have control over we get absolutely right and each player has the programme they need to be the best they can be.

"The under-18 group that were successful against England is the group that will feed our under-20s going into next year, and an under-20 A programme, but we're also looking at sevens as another development tool.

"It's an opportunity to develop some of these young players on an international stage, so we are looking to move to a full-time sevens group with some of these young players part of that.

"We have under-18s rugby, the Premier (club] rugby and sevens as another opportunity."

Kiwi Lowe joined the SRU last year, having worked up through the New Zealand system, and he has spent much of the time since studying the differences between Scotland and England and also Scotland and the southern hemisphere, and talking with players, coaches and teachers throughout the Scottish game. He is keen to see the top end of club rugby changed to become more of an elite stepping stone to the pro game and provide more stringent tests for talented young players.

But, with only two professional sides, and two academies, he views a sevens squad of ten-12 players, blending teenage talents with experienced sevens specialists, as providing more youngsters with the full-time development he believes is necessary to widen and improve the player pool for Edinburgh and Glasgow, and ultimately Scotland.

The squad would play in the world sevens series, which the IRB is currently looking at expanding, while the SRU remains in talks about contributing to a GB team for the Olympic Games in 2012.Asked whether the money spent on a sevens team might have been better spent on keeping players like Max Evans in Scotland, or signing an All Black to help a pro team compete in the Magners League, Lowe added: "This is not being made at the expense of the pro teams. These players will support the pro teams and, while they will be in sevens for a short time, it will be to develop, so this is an opportunity to accelerate their development for the pro teams.

"In the end it's a decision about prioritising the development opportunities we have against the ability to retain all the (professional] players available to us.

"Do we want all of our Scotland players to move out our pro teams? No we don't. But can we keep them all? No we can't.

"The reality of the development opportunity versus signing one All Black is that signing one All Black would cost excessively north of what it will cost to develop a group of sevens players."