Ross McCann is proof that playing rugby sevens hones the skills and improves the stamina to the extent it makes switching to fifteen-a-side a lot easier.
The GB team sevens player made the change look effortless when he won his first Scotland cap off the bench against Canada in Ottawa over the summer.
Now he wants to continue his steady progress with his new club Edinburgh starting with their pre-season friendly against Gloucester on Friday.
Strong enough, fast enough and confident enough from his years in the shortened version of the game he is one of the rising stars of the capital outfit.
Edinburgh-born McCann, who has one brother who is a Northern Ireland international footballer, another who plays for Dunfermline Athletic a third who plays rugby for Boroughmuir, first caught the eye of Gregor Townsend before anybody else.
The Scotland head coach had been impressed by his performances with the GB sevens team to the extent he named him in his squad for the last Six Nations.
He didn’t play but impressed Townsend with his talent, enthusiasm and attitude in training.
A glowing recommendation from Townsend and one competitive URC match for Edinburgh against the Dragons and a couple of friendlies early last season when he wasn’t on sevens duty led to the 26-year-old winger, a real live wire on and off the pitch, being awarded a full-time two-year contract at Edinburgh Rugby back in May.
He played for Scotland two months after signing for the capital club with Townsend bringing him into his squad for the Canada game after the GB sevens squad he was part of failed to qualify for the Olympics.
Since he has returned from international duty his only focus has been on his club.
“It’s cool to be at Edinburgh permanently as it was almost like having the club drip-fed into me last season whilst doing the sevens and playing here occasionally which just whetted my appetite,”said McCann.
“Last season I was focused on trying to get to the Olympics with the GB sevens team.
"We didn’t succeed in the end, but you don’t make every single thing that you aim for but we gave everything to get there but to come back now to play for Edinburgh again is great.
“I’ve done my service in sevens from 2017 to now, that’s seven years of my career. Now I want to give a lot to Edinburgh.
“I played four times for Edinburgh last season. Two pre-season, one URC and one A game. It was a little bit of an appetiser.”
McCann believes leaving the GB sevens programme that involved training on his own and travelling to GB sevens get togethers outside Scotland and now having the stability of training day in, day out at The Hive with Edinburgh will bring the best out of him.
“I went to GB sevens camps, back to Scotland, back to GB sevens and although I had a bit more of a settled environment over the past year I always used to dip in and out of things," said McCann, who saw the Scotland sevens team wound up and a GB one set up in its place.
“There were also things happening, not knowing whether we were going to have jobs the week after. Programmes starting and finishing, programmes potentially going out of business, that sort of thing so having stuff now under my control is a nice thing. I’m here at Edinburgh every day. It’s my job now, my 9-to-5.
“We were home training with GB, it was almost week on, week off, training four days back to back really hard, have a three-day weekend then back into camp.
"It’s challenging mentally as well. I was only in my flat for 18 days from the start of January to when we finished with the sevens in Monaco in June. I have been living out of a bag for a bit.
“I will never say my time with sevens is completely finished but as things stand I’m fully contracted with Edinburgh and my whole focus is here.”
The former Royal High School pupil, who has a tattoo on his arm of the Olympic rings to commemorate him being part of the GB sevens team that came fourth in Tokyo in 2020, likes to entertain and unlike many rugby players knows it is important to promote the game to the fans.
“The 15s game is trying to modernise and move forward, and you’ve got things like Netflix documentaries, people being able to show their personalities,” he said.
“The old rugby player in the past who would come and say ‘It’s great for the boys’, all that stuff, but that is ending and people are now able to show more of their personality.
“Even look at rugby players when I was a kid - the Honey Badger (Nick Cummins) from Australia who would come in and must have been a media man’s nightmare because he could have said anything.
But that’s the sort of rugby character you need, Ilona Maher (USA sevens), your Greg O’Shea (Ireland) doing Love Island. They bring people into the sport and show there are exciting and interesting people in it so we can start to grow the sport.
“I’ve got to the point in my career where I am a bit different. I am a bit weird - but I am quite comfortable to be that. If we can bring that out of younger players as well that would be good.
“Look at James Lang over the past couple of years, and how videos of him singing have grown the Edinburgh Rugby brand.
"There’s interesting characters here. Speak to Duhan (van der Merwe) and Darcy (Graham) and you get interesting stories out of them. People like Ewan Ashman bringing up different stories from down south.
"And look at the Premiership as well and how they’ve grown the brands of individual players. It makes it more interesting rather than talking about ‘I’m looking forward to the weekend, it will be a great battle’.”
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