Mallinder wants to stand by Sevens despite struggles
Players in contract limbo but chief keeps confidence
SCOTLAND’S out-ofcontract international 7s squad players are going to have to wait and see what the future holds for them after conformation yesterday morning that the 2020 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series has been cancelled due to ongoing travel and safety restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Jim Mallinder, the head of performance rugby in Scotland, insisted on a conference call yesterday afternoon that Scottish Rugby remains fully committed to the Sevens programme in the medium term, but also acknowledged that some tough decisions are going to have be made in the short term given that there are no tournaments to play in for the foreseeable future.
It was reported in the English press earlier this week that Scotland, England and Wales men’s and women’s sevens teams are likely to merge into a unified Great Britain side as a long-term result of the coronavirus crisis, with this being seen as a way of making Sevens a more attractive funding proposition for UK Sport ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
The three nations currently compete separately on the World Series circuit but come together as Team GB for the Olympics, but Mallinder insisted that beyond that there is no plans to disband the Scottish Sevens programme.
“Team GB is an option,” he said. “The Olympics are coming up next year and talking to Wales and England, they are quite keen on the Team GB model. We have said we are open to discussions in the very short-term on that, however, we are backing Scottish Rugby and our Sevens as a programme.
“It’s a real tricky one,” he added. “We had a feeling about the 2020 series being cancelled. Clearly, travelling to those places was not going to happen. That has been made official but we are still not quite aware of the structure of 2021, and what that is going to look like. We hope World Rugby come back with a proposal for that.”
Mallinder was not involved at the time, but he will be very aware that he is dealing with a hot potato here. His predecessor in the director of performance rugby role, Scott Johnson, toyed with the idea of pulling Scotland out of the World Series back in 2015, which prompted a furious backlash.
As the place where Sevens rugby was born, there is a deep attachment to the shortened game across the Scottish rugby landscape. There is also an appreciation both inside and outside Murrayfield that it plays a valuable role in player development, with the likes of Darcy Graham, Mark Bennett, George Horne, Greig Laidlaw and James Johnstone having benefitted from the programme in recent years.
“Having just two [pro] teams, we see it as vital for us,” said Mallinder. “We think it is good in terms of player development and also really good in terms of coach development. It is something that we are not going to chuck out.
“We’ve got the Commonwealth Games coming up in Birmingham in 2022 and we are very conscious of that. We are pulling everything together to hopefully have a good proposal moving forward.”
If that sounds promising, Mallinder did have to concede that the situation is far from ideal for those players currently caught in a state of limbo, unsure of whether the renewal deals they had been expecting will ever materialise. There were 14 core players in the Scotland Sevens squad last season, but not all of them are out of contract.
“Unfortunately, they are a little bit [in limbo],” he said. “We need to get clarity to them, which we are hoping to get. If we can understand what is happening moving forward in the next two or three weeks then, hopefully. we can pass on that clarity to the players.
“All the Sevens players at the moment are on furlough. We will make some decisions in the very near future. The contracts are very similar to the pro teams. We have some players who are already in contract and we have some whose contracts run out this summer.”
Mallinder added that he would like to see a third professional ‘franchise’ to house Scotland’s players in the future but added that this is not going to be a realistic prospect any time soon.
“I think it’s something that we should really consider, to try and get as many Scottish players playing at a high level as we can possibly do,” he said. “Whether that’s a third franchise playing in the PRO14, or somewhere else, it is something we need to consider. I don’t think it’s going to happen in the near future but it’s something we should look forward towards doing.”
Meanwhile, Melrose Rugby – the club which invented Sevens rugby – have been forced to bow to the inevitable and cancel their world-famous tournament, having initially pushed the event back from April until ‘later in the year’ when the Covid-19 pandemic first hit. It is the first time since World War 2 that the tournament has not gone ahead.