The Scottish Rugby Union will explore the "possibility of staging" an int'l at Ibrox Stadium after the "success of the Commonwealth Games sevens competition, which reached its climax" on Sunday night with South Africa "ending New Zealand’s 16-year hegemony" to win the Gold Medal, according to Alex Lowe of the LONDON TIMES. Scotland moves one of its autumn fixtures "away from Murrayfield each year, most recently to Aberdeen." The SRU is "bidding to continue staging a leg" of the Int'l Rugby Board World Sevens series in Glasgow through to '20 and it will "move the tournament from Scotstoun, its present location, to Ibrox if it is successful." This weekend "can only have helped" (LONDON TIMES, 7/28). In Sydney, Wayne Smith reported the IRB is "learning how to play the Olympic game." The "secret to survival as an Olympic sport is to be highly visible which translates into money -- always of great importance" to the IOC. Low-visibility sports "tend not to be retained, as baseball and softball could attest." Rugby's inclusion on the Olympic program is "provisional only at this stage." If it does not prove a hit at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro and 2020 Tokyo Games, "it will be shuffled out the door and on to the Olympic scrapheap." IRB CEO Brett Gosper said, "The IOC will decide if rugby is a core sport or not." Gosper: "So we're guaranteed two Olympics but if we do a good job in Rio we'll become a core sport and go beyond Tokyo as well. So that's why it's very important to get Rio right" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 7/29). In London, Andy Bull wrote on the Guardian's Talking Sport blog 186,000 tickets were sold for the sevens, "split between four sessions." The noise was "like nothing else that has been heard here yet, so loud it was almost painful for ears grown accustomed to the sound of smaller crowds in smaller venues." It has been one "weekend-long party in the west of the city." On Saturday there was a "marriage proposal in the middle of the pitch." James Collette, "a soldier just back from Afghanistan, had arranged it all with the organisers beforehand." At one point on Sunday morning "there was a 40,000-strong sing-a-long of Sweet Caroline" (GUARDIAN, 7/27).
