Scotland Silver Medallists in Paris

Scotland finished second at the Paris 7s, winning five games in a row before narrowly falling short to newly crowned World Champions South Africa in the Cup Final. Calum MacRae’s men beat the top three seeded teams in the world on their route to the final, and have climbed two places to seventh in the World Series standings.They have been drawn in Pool B against France, Argentina and Russia as they look to defend the title they won at Twickenham last year in the final tournament of the series.Day One.Scotland faced the daunting task of starting their Paris tournament against series leaders South Africa and produced a wonderful performance to win 19-12 with tries from Jamie Farndale, Hugh Blake and Scott Wight.Next up were Canada who came into the tournament having lifted the Cup in Singapore. Scotland showed fantastic resilience to score two late tries having fallen behind and take the game 26-19.Scotland’s final opponents on day one were Japan and they showed no signs of taking their foot off the pedal, scoring five tries on their way to a 31-14 victory.Jo Nayacavou (2), George Horne, Scott Riddell and James Fleming scored the tries that saw Scotland top Pool A.Day Two.Three from three on day one set up a Cup Quarter Final against Fiji, a team ranked second in the world that Scotland had not beaten for four years. However, they continued their good form from day one and a brace of tries each for Farndale and Mark Robertson saw Scotland record a famous 24-0 win.It was England in the semi-final and a Dan Norton hat-trick for the English was bettered by a score each by Horne, Wight and Robertson as Scotland snuck into their second ever Cup Final, 19-17.Scotland’s victory over England ensured that South Africa could not be caught at the top of the World Series table, and it was the new Champions they would face in the Final.Scott Wight’s lovely try to finish off a flowing move wasn’t quite enough as the Blitzbokke won the final 5-15.Reaction. Scotland 7s Head Coach Calum MacRae said: I’m incredibly proud of my players. The rugby they played over the two days of competition was as good as I’ve seen.The players worked hard for each other. We put a tough two weeks of training in at home and a lot of it transfered onto the field.They players are naturally dissapointed but mainly due to the manner of the loss in the final. To win big games the basics and set piece need to be there, we lost concentration and it cost us.There were so many performances in the group. George Horne was tremendous, his competative edge and energy adds a lot to us.We showed that last year in London wasn’t a flash in the pan. We didn’t get across the line today but will use the dissapointment as a positive driver.