John Dalziel has left his role as the Scotland sevens team’s coach to join Glasgow Warriors as forwards coach, starting work with them immediately as they finalise their preparations for the Pro14 play-offs.

Glasgow will face the winners of today’s quarter-final between Ulster and Connacht in their semi-final at Scotstoun on May 17 and Dalziel’s recruitment as a replacement in the longer term for the soon-to-depart Jonathan Humphreys will bring additional energy into the camp at a useful time as he makes the transition back into the 15-a-side game after two years with the sevens squad.

“I have really enjoyed my two years working with the sevens team and competing on what is a very competitive circuit,” he said yesterday.

“It has greatly helped my personal and professional development and I feel it was successful in developing younger players and fulfilling the remit of enabling them to perform well in sevens and be integrated back into 15s. I have always been clear in my ambition to coach at a professional level and my experiences so far at Melrose, London Scottish, age-grades and sevens have all led to that goal. I think the hard work starts now, but I am impressed with the set-up Dave Rennie has in place, there is a team approach among the coaches and I’ve worked with many of the Glasgow players through the age-grade system or sevens so I’m very much looking forward to this new stage of my career.”

Long seen as a means of developing players or keeping them in the professional game, the sevens set-up is also now becoming something of a finishing school for coaches, Dalziel following the same path as his immediate predecessor and former Border Reivers team-mate Calum MacRae, who joined Edinburgh as defence coach in 2017.

“John has earned his stripes,” said Glasgow’s head coach Dave Rennie.

“He’s coached at club level, in the Championship, at international age grade and on the sevens circuit and has been successful in every role he’s been in. He’s an excellent young coach, innovative and driven and is highly respected by everyone at the club. John has a very bright future ahead of him and we’re rapt that he sees it at Glasgow Warriors.”

With attack coach Mike Blair also leaving Scotstoun in order to work full-time with the Scotland squad, Rennie said previously that he intends to take on more of the work-load in streamlining his back-room team but indicated yesterday that there is another appointment still to be made.

For their last two World Cup Sevens Series tournaments this season, in London and Paris, the sevens team will meanwhile be looked after on a caretaker-basis by its former captain Scott Forrest, however he wants to remain in his current as high performance manager of the Scottish women’s game in the longer term.

“As a former player on the World Series this was an opportunity I didn’t want to turn down (but) I’m still developing as a coach and very much enjoying my current role working with Scotland Women so it isn’t the right time for me to do this full time just now,” he said.

“While the current sevens squad are a young group from the time I’ve spent with them they are good professionals and self-reliant and know what they want to achieve.”