Scotland 7s won the bowl final at the IRB New Zealand Sevens in Wellington today, beating Canada 10-5 in extra time to lift their first piece of silverware this season.

Scotland had a frustrating day yesterday, narrowly losing to England (12-5) and Australia (22-12) in matches that coach Rob Moffat felt could have been won. With a 34-12 win over Papua New Guinea in the final pool match, Scotland found themselves drawn against the island of Niue in today’s bowl competition.

The little known rugby island put up a brave fight and gave the Scots a fright this morning as Scotland ran out 14-12 winners. They regrouped and put in a superb performance against semi-finalists Kenya, who beat Tonga 15-14 in their quarter-final, to notch a 61-0 victory – the highest winning margin of the day across all competitions.

In the final, Scotland found themselves trailing to Canada 5-0 after an early score but Edinburgh Gunners’ scrum-half Rory Lawson brought the sides level with a well worked try. Stand-off Colin Gregor hit the crossbar with the conversion attempt so the two sides watched as the clock ticked down and into extra time.

Lawson was the catalyst for the winning score as he broke free from the Canadian defence. He found his Gunners’ team-mate Ross Rennie in support and shipped the ball to him. The Stewart’s Melville FP flanker finished the move with a 30 metre dash to the line.

Coach Moffat said: “To be fair to the players we deserved to come away with some silverware. Yesterday was frustrating because we played some great rugby and should have beaten both England and Australia.

“Niue came as a bit of a surprise this morning and we didn’t perform as we know we can but we put our best team out against Kenya and put 61 points past them. They were hardly in the game because we didn’t let them. The final was excellent and we coped well in a stop-start game that suited Canada more than us. Ross took his try well to win the game.

“Last year we qualified for six out of the eight cup competitions and in the two we didn’t we were knocked out of the bowl in the semi-finals so it was a good feeling to win today. The atmosphere here is unbelievable – they love Scotland. At times it felt like all 40,000 spectators in the stadium were chanting SCOTLAND, SCOTLAND!”

“The bottom line is that we have played good rugby recently but we needed to win. We finish ninth overall but the rugby we’ve played takes us into next week’s tournament in Los Angeles feeling very confident,” he added.

Scrum-half Rory Lawson will return to Scotland as the squad fly on the IRB USA Sevens (10 and 11 February). He flies home to help Edinburgh’s preparations for their Celtic League clash with Ulster at Murrayfield on Friday 17 February. He will be replaced by Newcastle Falcons and Scotland 7s winger Cameron Johnston.

Moffat said: “Cammie will give us a bit of extra pace out wide and he’ll fit into the squad well. Rory has had an excellent tournament with us and I’m sure he’ll have developed as a player because of it.”

Winger Andrew Turnbull was able to train with the squad this week, thanks to the Scottish Institute of Sport, as he continues to recover well from a knee injury. Moffat said: “Andrew is almost fit and he’s had a very good week. He’d love the type of rugby we are playing just now and we are looking forward to him returning soon. It’s fantastic that the Institute were able to help us bring him out here.”

The squad take on Fiji, Argentina and Uruguay in next week’s tournament and Moffat is realistically excited about the challenges ahead. He said: “Fiji look like they have got 20 gears at the moment and they’re playing some fantastic rugby so we have to get in amongst them. We’ve had some close games against Argentina recently so it’ll be interesting but the aim is to qualify for the cup.”

SCOTLAND 7s TEAM v CANADA – BOWL FINAL

Mark Lee * (King’s Own Scottish Borderers) CAPTAIN, David Gray * (Exeter Chiefs), Ross Rennie (Edinburgh Gunners and Stewart’s Melville FP), Rory Lawson * (Edinburgh Gunners), Colin Gregor * (Glasgow Warriors and Watsonians), Ali Warnock * (Nottingham), Nick De Luca * (Edinburgh Gunners and Heriot’s)
Substitutes: (not used) Scott Forrest (Glasgow Warriors and Glasgow Hawks), Oli Brown * (Boroughmuir), Ciaran Beattie (Border Reivers and Selkirk), Mark Robertson (Melrose), Clark Laidlaw * (Jed-Forest),

* indicates member of the Scottish Institute of Sport

For more information on the IRB Sevens series visit www.irbsevens.com

This article was posted on 4-Feb-2006, 18:15 by Hugh Barrow.