Defeats to Wales and Australia cost Scots in George

• Samy Ben Letaief of France tackles Scotland's Peter Horne during day one of the South Africa Sevens Picture: Getty Images

That placed the Scots third in Pool A, the group seeding and position they achieved in their pool in last weekend's Emirates Airline Dubai Sevens. A resurgent Wales topped the pool with Australia runners-up.

"We would have liked to have been in the quarter-finals against either Fiji or Samoa but we know that we will have to fight for our lives in the Bowl competition among teams who can all beat each other," said the Scotland coach, Graham Shiel, adding: "We achieved a lot. We can take a huge amount of confidence from every success, however small. What we have to do is transfer the hard work we've done in training to games. There were a lot of individual errors and at this level they're costly.

"The challenge for us is to compete better on day two because that's something we've not been so good at. But overall although I'm disappointed it was pleasing that we gave both Wales and Australia hard games. We matched Australia for most of the first half but they scored two quick tries just before the break. We stuck to our task and came back at them in the second half."

Scotland began day one of the South Africa Sevens in George with what was a hard-fought win over France despite the closeness of the score at half-time, when Scotland led 14-12. They finally secured a 21-12 victory.

Then in their second pool match Scotland faced a Wales side that contained three of their World-cup winning squad and lost 21-7.

Scotland's final pool game was against Australia, winners over Scotland last weekend in Dubai by 41-14, to decide the second and third positions in Pool A. In the event Scotland competed much better this week but still lost 21-7.

Scotland Sevens Squad: David Denton (Edinburgh), Struan Dewar (Heriot's), Michael Fedo (Northumbria), Scott Riddell (Stewart's-Melville), Graham Fisken (West of Scotland), Ross Samson (Edinburgh), Fraser Harkness (Selkirk), Andrew Skeen (Watsonians), Peter Horne (Glasgow), James Johnstone (Currie), Doug Fife (Currie), James Fleming (Dundee HSFP).

Emirates Airline South Africa Sevens Cup quarter finals: Wales v Samoa, South Africa v England, New Zealand v Argentina, Fiji v Australia

Bowl quarter finals: Scotland v Namibia, Portugal v Kenya, Russia v Zimbabwe, USA v France