The final countdown: Scotland 7s captain, Scott Forrest, writes his exclusive Commonwealth Games blog for scottishrugby.org where he talks about watching inspirational medal-winning Scots in action, taking on England in the side’s second hit-out of the camp, and the changing dynamic of physical and mental preparation in the final days leading up to the two-day tournament on Monday and Tuesday (11 and 12 October).
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Hello everyone at home and in Delhi,
There’s definitely been of shift in the atmosphere since I wrote my last blog. We were a week out, which is good amount of time to go over a variety of things in training but it’s Saturday today and we’re two days away from the tournament. We’ve been training hard all week so, as planned, we have a day off today (Saturday), one more training session tomorrow (the captain’s run) and then it’s game day. It’s come around pretty quickly and I’m quite glad of that. We’ve been here for a while, we’ve trained a lot, watched some other sports and some Scots win medals and the rugby boys are now ready and keen to get going.
It’s been great to watch the triumphs of our fellow Team Scotland team mates; we watched the cycling at the velodrome and were there when Jenny Davis and Charline Joiner won silver in the team sprint. It’s tremendous watching it live, all the athletes get quite excited and supportive of one another when Scotland are playing or competing, whether they’re there watching it live or on TV in the Athletes’ Village.


After our day off on Wednesday we had our second hit-out of the camp, this time against England, which definitely helped our preparation. Match intensity, particularly the contact element, is difficult to replicate in training so it was good to run against another team and test ourselves on other aspects which, again, are tough to test in training. This hit-out was especially good as normally in an IRB 7s week the hit-out would not be full contact because the tournament is so close but, as we were four days out, we played a couple of seven minutes of scrag and then two five minute halves of full contact, which we definitely benefited from.
We carried on as normal on Friday although the session was probably a bit shorter than usual: light skills session in the Athletes’ Village in the morning, trained in the afternoon for about an hour (our last chance to really fine tune things properly) before our day off today (Saturday). When you get a day off it’s best not to think about the tournament too much. We spend most of our time fully focussed on rugby: analysing individual games and players, our performance and a variety of scenarios so when you get a day off you should try and switch off for most of the day (most of us will probably go and watch some of the hockey this evening). It’s important for me and the players to try and give your mind a rest so that when you come back in tomorrow (Sunday) you’re fresh.
 
And then it’s the captain’s run on Sunday. The captain’s run is the training session the day before match-day where the whole day is created to mimic the routine of the tournament. For the last week and a half we’ve been up at eight as there’s no need to get up much earlier if you’re training in the afternoon as well but Monday (match day one) is an earlier start as we kick-off against Guyana at 10.06am (5.36am BST) so we’ll benefit from being up earlier the day before to get our bodies into that routine.
What sets the captain’s run apart is that while Stephen Gemmell (head coach) usually runs the training, it’s up to the players to run the captains’ run. Stephen lets us pick nine different starting points to run through any set-piece point like a scrum, lineout, kick-off or re-start then it’s up the players to run the session from there. If we don’t get it right then we don’t do it again. The pressure is on us to get them right and treat it as we would in game. It’s about how we react to it.
After the captain’s run we’ll talk over a few things before watching some other sports on the TV, staying comfortable and trying and get our minds off the tournament if we can, trying not to over think it or get ahead of ourselves mentally. We’ll have a couple of meetings to talk through logistics, timings, what we need to take and what to expect at the ground before we have our jersey presentation – that’s when everyone stars to really home in on the tournament and emotions start to come out.

The excitement is really starting to build. I tend not to get nervous this far out, maybe a bit just before a game but the atmosphere is definitely starting to build up to the two days. Having put in a lot of training and hard work we’re really looking forward to getting out there, hopefully winning some games and doing well in the competition. So far we’ve done all the little things right, it’s now about turning up for the first game against Guyana and gtting the win. Our minds are focussed fully on that game as a win will give us the confidence to go forward one game at a time.
Thanks once more to everyone in India and at home for your continued support.
Scott Forrest
Scotland 7s captain
 
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This article was posted on 10-Oct-2010, 19:44 by Hugh Barrow.