Sevens blow as Bennett stays home
EDINBURGH coach Richard Cockerill last night insisted there was never any chance of GB Sevens star Mark Bennett joining Team Scotland on the Gold Coast.
And the Englishman said professional teams will always take precedence over the shortened form of the game.
Sevens coach John Dalziel, who has persuaded both Glasgow and Edinburgh to release six players between them for next month’s Commonwealth Games, admitted Bennett would have been ‘one of the first names on everybody’s lips’ when putting together a select.
But the centre, who played for the Scots at Glasgow 2014 and was a star performer for Team GB in Rio, was ruled out pretty swiftly.
Cockerill said it was clear where the SRU’s priorities lie, with Edinburgh making progress in the Pro14 and still competing in the European Challenge Cup.
‘He is needed here,’ said the head coach. ‘Edinburgh takes precedence over the Sevens because we are one of the pro teams. The Sevens is a development tool for the 15s.
‘Mark Bennett is first-choice 13 for us. We have some really important games and our best players will stay with the 15s.
‘We are at the business end of the season. I am not going to let my best players go and play Sevens when we have a chance of being in the play-offs and the quarter-finals of Europe.
‘Edinburgh have everything to play for. The Sevens is important in a different way.
‘My agenda is not Sevens. It is Edinburgh rugby.
‘The union are very supportive of that. There is no stress around it. There are good conversations we are having.
‘It (Sevens) is a development programme. I don’t want to belittle it but we have two pro teams.
‘There is a small player pool and we have to get as many through to the 15s as possible.
‘Myself and John Dalziel work very closely to try and make it work.’
Dalziel, whose group of 15-a-side recruits includes former Scotland regular Ruaridh Jackson, admitted: ‘Mark Bennett would be one of the first names on everybody’s lips at the beginning of the process.
‘Mark is such a quality operator that, come the big games Edinburgh have, he’s probably going to start at 13 for them.
‘We’ve had excellent dialogue with the pro coaches and the governing body was involved in getting the best possible squad for Team Scotland.
‘Obviously Glasgow’s season has been pretty cut and dried. The success they’ve had early in the season has almost meant they’ve had the confidence to say where they’re going to be.
‘Edinburgh is different because they’ve hit such a vein of form. We had good dialogue with them, looking at the important games they’ve got but also the World Series events we’ve got.
‘It made it easier to get availability from Glasgow, with them being nailed on, but we had constant dialogue with Edinburgh.’
The pro club players will all join up with the Sevens squad next week, training together before taking part in the sport’s flagship event in Hong Kong — and then heading straight to Australia.
Dalziel, who knows his team face a battle to overcome World Cup holders South Africa to make it out of their pool and into the semi-finals, insisted: ‘The squad we’ve named is a sign of how serious this is being taken, 100 per cent.
‘From my point of view, having the buy-in from both pro coaches has been massive.
‘They could have just looked at their own little corner.
‘Dave Rennie (Glasgow coach), coming from a New Zealand background, has seen the wrong side of it with New Zealand not being well-supported, in terms of their Olympic selection not coming from the 15-a-side game. So he’s been huge in terms of his approach.’