Scotland booked their place in the quarter-finals of the medal rounds at the Commonwealth Games courtesy of victory over Canada in their final match at Ibrox today.
The hosts, who had narrowly lost to New Zealand and beaten Barbados to set up the winner-takes-all encounter, eased to a 21-5 victory to set up a showdown with South Africa in the last eight.
Forward Roddy Grant was one of the players who helped the Scots to the victory, and he ranks the occasion as one of the best that he has experienced on a rugby field.
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"It was an amazing feeling to win with the crowd. It's up there with one of my best rugby memories," he told Sports Mole immediately after the game.
"Knowing what it is going to be like tomorrow in the quarter-finals - to be honest, we had to win. Had we lost it would have been really bad."
The first day of sevens action is all about getting into day two, when the trophies are won, and Grant believes that the victory over Canada could give his side valuable momentum for tomorrow.
"It gives us a lot of momentum. We're going in full of confidence. Even though we lost against New Zealand, which was gutting, we still played reasonably well, had a good win against Barbados, and [Canada] was a hell of a win," he added.
"The way we fought for each other - but to be honest we've been around the block with sevens. It doesn't really matter what you do on the first day so, sure momentum, we've played pretty well, but it doesn't count for anything if you don't turn up tomorrow."
The only blotch on the copybook for Scotland was a defeat to reigning Commonwealth Games, IRB World Series and World Cup champions New Zealand, although they came agonisingly close to creating history by becoming the first team to topple the All Blacks at the Games.
The hosts found themselves 17-0 down at the break, but managed to fight back to 17-14 before New Zealand held out despite having two men in the sin bin.
However, the performance has raised belief that Scotland are very much in the hunt for medals.
"We certainly believe we are. New Zealand have never lost a game at the Commonwealth Games, and I know that we as a team would love to be the first ones to do it. We couldn't unfortunately do it this morning," he added.
"No Scottish team has ever beaten New Zealand at any level, so as individuals we want to be in the team that does that. But we've got to win the quarter-final tomorrow. We can't think about the final - that's where we want to be, that's our goal - but we've got to win the first game."
Having finished second in Group A behind the All Blacks, Scotland have been handed the tougher quarter-final draw on paper as they take on South Africa, but Grant insists that it doesn't matter who they could have faced in the last eight.
"Our goal is to win this and you've got to beat anyone to win this. It doesn't matter [who we face], in a quarter-final it will be a really tough game," Grant added.
Scotland are due to face South Africa at 1.12pm tomorrow afternoon.
Barney Corkhill
