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SCOTLAND SHOCKED IN BOWL AND SHIELD |
In today's quarter final Bowl event in Dubai, Scotland suffered a shock 5-19 defeat at the hands of Zimbabwe to move them into the Shield semi final. That game, against the USA, then recorded a 14-17 loss for the Scots who must now regroup for the second tournament in this season's IRB World Series, in George, South Africa next weekend.
After the half-time break, Scotland struck first, Andrew Easson crossing the whitewash and Graham Hogg adding the extras. However, the USA had the final word with two unconverted tries to seal the victory.
Coach Stephen Gemmell said: "We were here - in this situation - two years ago, with a fairly new group of players getting their first taste of international rugby sevens.
Individually we weren't good enough and we didn't function as a team. There's no good getting things right and scoring one minute then not doing the same the next.
We now need to look each other in the eye and regroup ahead of South Africa next weekend.
We've got Fiji, Argentina and Zimbabwe in our group at the South Africa Sevens so it's not going to get any easier. We want to measure ourselves against the best in the world and now that the boys have had the experience of the Dubai Sevens, we need to front up and learn from what's happened here this week."
Scotland 7s team v USA 7s: Roddy Grant (West of Scotland)* CAPTAIN, Fraser McKenzie (Edinburgh), Chris Fusaro (Heriots)*, Graham Hogg (Hawick)*, Rory Hutton (Hawick)*, Andrew Easson (Edinburgh), Tom Bury (Boroughmuir)**
Substitutes: Colin Shaw (Glasgow Warriors) for Fusaro, Chris Kinloch (Glasgow Warriors) |
