Rugby: Father and son crave respect

Roy and Clark Laidlaw are a father and son on a shared mission in Manchester: to recapture for Scotland the respect in sevens rugby that the country's proud history demands.

It was in the Borders town of Melrose, more than 100 years ago, that sevens was born. Scotland, however, failed to qualify for last year's World Cup Sevens, held in Argentina, and in recent times have been beaten by emerging nations such as Portugal and Georgia. Moreover, in 1998, the Scottish public were dismayed by the decision not to send a team to the inaugural Commonwealth Games sevens in Kuala Lumpur.

Enter the Laidlaws. Early in 2001, in reaction to the lack of sevens success, the Scottish Rugby Union appointed Roy Laidlaw, the 48-year-old former Scotland scrum-half, to draw up and manage a new sevens programme. Support from insurance firm NIG helped the formation of the NIG Scottish Thistles, a sevens development team, and Clark Laidlaw was among a new group of players sel-ected to represent The Thistles and then to train with the full Scotland sevens squad.

"We had actually dropped out of international sevens for a whole year,'' said Roy Laidlaw, "but we wrote our new sevens programme in the early months of 2001, after I had travelled to New Zealand to study their methods with regards to sevens. They have the ideal structure, which is why they are still No 1. They contract their chosen players, and many then go straight into Super 12 rugby.

"As for us, last winter the Scotland team played in the IRB World Sevens Series, and our whole programme so far, with the national side and with the NIG Scottish Thistles, has been designed to prepare this Games team. Next weekend's tournament is a real staging post, and the Scottish public will be expecting a competitive performance.''

This is where Clark Laidlaw hopes to come in. He, Mike Blair, the speedster Rory Kerr and Mark Lee, the captain, represent an exciting new generation of Scottish players, fast developing too as 15-a-side talents largely as a result of their sevens experience.

Blair, the scrum-half, won his first two full Scotland caps on the North America tour, and has signed professionally with Edinburgh. Laidlaw Junior is also fresh to the professional ranks, with the newly formed Borders team.

"It is a very exciting time for me,'' said Clark, 25, a stand-off half. "We have all worked very hard in preparation for the Games, and the addition of quality players like Simon Taylor to our squad has strengthened us further.

"Of course, dad has been a big influence on my career so far. He does sometimes tell me off for eating the wrong food or something, but he understands international rugby and what makes an international player. In training, though, he tends mostly to leave me to Rob Moffat, our coach!''