Borderer Ciaran Beattie facing uphill struggle to save Great Britain rugby sevens squad from relegation
Selkirk’s Ciaran Beattie is now facing an uphill task to save Great Britain’s Scottish-based men’s rugby sevens squad from relegation.
His team, featuring former Melrose scrum-half Roan Frostwick, ended up bottom of 12 at Spain’s Valladolid Sevens at the weekend, only picking up a single point, and that leaves them at the foot of the World Sevens Series championship standings too, on four points, ten adrift of the top eight placing they need to stay up.
That means they’ve got it all to do at France’s Bordeaux Sevens this coming weekend if they’re to have any hope of survival.
The Souter’s side lost all four of their matches in Spain – by 17-12 to South Africa and 26-21 to Australia in their pool last Friday, by 12-7 to Kenya in their pool and 26-21 to the USA in their first play-off on Saturday and by 19-17 to Uruguay in an 11th-place play-off on Sunday.
Making up the rest of the British squad, captained by Charlton Kerr, were Marcus Kershaw, Matt Davidson, Jacob Henry, Ethan Waddleton, Ben Salmon, Fin Lloyd Gilmour, Ryan Apps, Tom Burton, Kaleem Barreto, Josh Radcliffe and Sunni Jardine.
Frostwick, 25, kicked three conversions for his team over the weekend, one against Kenya and two versus the USA.
Beattie, 40, GB’s director of rugby sevens, said: “It was a really tough weekend.
“We started off well in day one and put in some excellent performances against South Africa and Australia. We need to be crossing the line at this stage, though, and to not do that is really disappointing.
“We know we now need to have an excellent tournament to finish in that top eight and avoid relegation.”