Fife won’t miss Gold Coast medal chance

Dougie Fife wouldn’t swap a cold Saturday night in Edinburgh in April for the sunshine of the Gold Coast as an indication of how he’s restarted his career.

The wing could have been forgiven for being wistful tomorrow morning when the Scotland 7s squad he was part of for two seasons go in search of a Commonwealth Games medal. But Fife was reclaimed by Richard Cockerill for Edinburgh and he’s grabbed the chance to re-establish himself in 15s.

“It’s still a tough question, but I’m back with Edinburgh now,” he said, preparing for the meeting with Scarlets at Murrayfield that could book Edinburgh’s unexpected PRO14 play-off place.

“It would have been awesome to be part of the Commonwealth Games but that’s where I am, I’m enjoying being back here.”

He’ll be watching avidly however as the Scots play their pool games in the Games tomorrow,withthecrunchgame against South Africa looking like the one that will decide whether the Scots can get a medal.

“That would obviously be the big game, you’ve got to top that pool which is a bit different compared with the World Series where the top two go through (to the quarter-finals),” he said.

For Fife, 7s was the springboard back to a pro contract after he was shipped out of Edinburgh under the previous coaching regime.

“I wasn’t getting game time, and to take a chance to do that for a year I couldn’t turn it down, but Edinburgh wasn’t an option at the time,” he said.

“But when I was there it was nothing to do with development, we were there to win tournaments. We saw that when we got to the end of the season at the big tournaments like the London tournament when we had a performance group, the older guys were there to win.

“But you do see younger guys coming through, which has been brilliant. Guys are on the edge of potential being 15s players if they want it, but I know they love their sevens.”

Back at Edinburgh, Fife and his team-mates are determined not to let the second chance to book a play-off place go by after last week’s loss to Ulster.

“We let ourselves down at the weekend where we were all really gutted about that, but luckily we’ve put ourselves in a position where we’ve got another shot to push Scarlets for second place and hopefully get away from Ulster in third,” he added.