Scotland's sevens squad have been given an excellent chance of finishing their World Series campaign in style on home soil after getting a favourable draw for the tournament.
Having improved throughout the season, the Scottish side have reached the knock-out stages of their last three major competitions, earning them enhanced status among the second tier of seeds.
That means they are now expected to reach the last eight and when the series comes to the country in which it was invented for the first time, they have a chance of going through as pool winners by coming out of the hat with South Africa, the lowest ranked of the top four seeds.
"After reaching three back-to- back quarter-finals for the first time, we want to do something special at Murrayfield," said Stevie Gemmell, the Scotland coach.
The timing of the Murrayfield event represents something of a gamble, since there is no track record of staging major rugby events in this country in the summer. However, the prospect of the home team being competitive can only add to the anticipation of bringing in good crowds.
That is also a remarkable turnaround considering that in the opening three events of the season, at Dubai, South Africa and New Zealand, they were losing to Portugal, twice, Zimbabwe and Kenya, while scraping past Papua New Guinea and the US.
All the more so when Gemmell explains the logistical task he has faced. "We've used a total of 24 players at an average age of 21, the oldest being 26, the youngest 17," he pointed out.
Yet he says so without a trace of complaint because Gemmell fully understands the balance he must strike between being competitive and developing players for the professional teams or the national age-grade XVs and he is delighted when they are called away to play at that level.
"We could go around the world winning every tournament and there are countries that have so many players they can do that, but if our players don't move on I'm not doing my job," he said.
"I can't hide behind that because our results are also very important, and anyway, if we do not win games then the players are not being developed as well as they can be."
However, he is very aware of the need to put on a show at Murrayfield. "The last few weeks have been wonderful and a real highlight was hearing 40,000 people cheering Scotland, Scotland,' when we were pushing Fiji in the quarter-finals in Hong Kong," said Gemmell.
"So we are looking to build on that and, hopefully, we'll have our strongest squad available. Also, the great thing about sevens for spectators is that it is so easy to understand.
"You don't have to understand the complexities of rugby to enjoy it because it is all so open, which is why crowds all over the world love it."
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