Scottish Rugby launches full-time men’s sevens programme at Oriam
Scottish Rugby is to run the Scotland and Great Britain men’s sevens programmes full-time from Oriam, boosting their relationship with Scotland’s Sports Performance Centre at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
A small group of core Scottish contracted players will be based there, as well as Great Britain Men’s Sevens ahead of World Series events.
This marks another significant step forward in our partnership with Scottish Rugby, which continues to go from strength to strength.
Announcing the decision, Scottish Rugby’s Performance Director, David Nucifora said: “Oriam is a high-quality training base for our teams and we look forward to continue working with Oriam in the future as we grow and develop our high-performance plans.
"Having a cohort of Scottish men’s players training regularly together will really help progress the new Great Britain Sevens model and allow us to work with the best Welsh and English players where we aim to perform well on the world stage.”
The Men’s Sevens programme will be run by Ciaran Beattie, who was previously head coach of Scotland Sevens and has led Great Britain Sevens since Scotland, England and Wales combined to compete on the World Series. In addition to the contracted sevens players, a number of others selected from Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby’s professional academies, as well as players from the National Talent Pathway, will also join the programme at Oriam. Players from club sides around Scotland will be given opportunities to be considered.
Oriam’s Executive Director, Ross Campbell, welcomed the decision: “This marks another significant step forward in our partnership with Scottish Rugby, which continues to go from strength to strength.
"We are proud to be the performance home of Scottish Rugby and look forward to providing world-class facilities and support services to the players and staff as they prepare for success on the international stage.”
The move reflects Scottish Rugby’s growing presence at Oriam. As part of its commitment to develop the women’s game domestically, Scottish Rugby announced last month that contracted players based in Scotland would be supported through a new centralised programme at Oriam. This includes 11 players with full contracts and seven with development contracts. A further 15 emerging players will have day to day access to the programme.
Performance Director, David Nucifora, said: “We are building a new high-performance environment at Oriam and the women’s programme will directly benefit from the expertise we have added around nutrition, S&C, and wider athlete support.”
The women’s training programme is already underway. Following the performances of Scotland Women at the Women Rugby World Cup this year, the focus is now on qualifying for, and competing in, the Rugby World Cup 2029.
One of the players is Heriot-Watt University Sports Scholar, Molly Poolman. She’s studying Sport and Exercise Science and was part of the Women’s Rugby World Cup Squad. To find out more about the Sports Scholarship programme, visit the website.
Oriam is a wholly owned subsidiary of Heriot-Watt and is funded by the Scottish Government, Sport Scotland – Scotland’s national agency for sport – and City of Edinburgh Council. The centre is based on Heriot-Watt’s Riccarton campus to the west of Edinburgh and is around four miles from Edinburgh Airport.