Rugby sevens comes home: Scotland to host GB Sevens programme
Scotland is ‘natural place’ for abbreviated game
Scotland is to become the new home for rugby sevens in the UK and will become the base for the Great Britain teams.
The abbreviated game has huge historical significance for this country and, crucially, has heavyweight support in the corridors of power at Murrayfield.
David Nucifora, Scottish Rugby’s performance director consultant, is a big sevens fan and sees it as a way of identifying and developing talent. Alex Williamson, the governing body’s chief executive, agrees and has lobbied hard for the GB team to come north where the sport has its roots.
Rugby sevens originated in Melrose in 1883 and the Borders circuit remains an important part of the rugby calendar in Scotland. Williamson believes the strong Scottish connection to sevens makes it a natural fit.
“It’s a natural place for us to be,” Williamson said in June. “It is a Scottish game, we would love to be running round doing it. Everyone I have met is a lover of sevens and has got a willingness to invest, but only in Scotland.”
It is expected to be confirmed on Wednesday that Scotland will become the new home for GB Sevens.
The future of international sevens in the UK was placed into doubt earlier this year after it was confirmed that the Great Britain men’s and women’s full-time teams programme were to be scrapped. The unions say the decision has been driven by financial pressures.
Williamson said that he and Nucifora had not given up on sevens remaining full-time and World Rugby announced this week that GB teams would be participating in the top tier of a new three-division global sevens model.
The revamped series features six regular-season rounds leading into a three-event HSBC SVNS World Championship, which will decide the line-up for the 2027 top tier.
The HSBC SVNS Series tournaments are scheduled for Dubai (29-30 November, 2025), Cape Town (6-7 December, 2025), Singapore (31 January-1 February, 2026), Australia (7-8 February, 2026), Vancouver (7-8 March, 2026) and USA (14-15 March, 2026).
The three HSBC SVNS World Championship events are in Hong Kong (17-19 April, 2026), Valladolid (29-31 May, 2026) and Bordeaux (5-7 June, 2026).
A men’s Scotland national sevens team used to compete in the World Series but in 2022 they were subsumed into the GB team with England and Wales, with the aim of competing at the 2024 Olympics. However, the GB men failed to qualify for the Paris Games.
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