Tonight's rugby news as Wales Sevens ditched from World Series in favour of Team GB

Here are the latest rugby evening headlines on Wednesday, July 20.

Wales will no longer participate in the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series next season after it was announced the Welsh, English and Scottish will combine to form a Great Britain men's and women's team instead.

The move has been ratified and mandated by World Rugby, aligning the governing bodies' future direction of sevens and connection to its Olympic status. It means that Great Britain will be a representative team in the World Series for men and women, replacing England, Scotland and Wales in the men's competition and England in the women's, although each union will retain individual Commonwealth Games and Rugby World Cup status, depending on qualification.

The respective unions and World Rugby are in discussions regarding further playing opportunities for the England, Scotland and Wales teams. Great Britain's men won silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics and were fourth in Tokyo last year, while GB women finished fourth on both of those occasions.

WRU performance director Nigel Walker said: "We will maintain male and female sevens programmes in Wales to develop players and coaches and make sure there is a pipeline of talent culminating in the opportunity to push for GB selection, and ultimately compete at an Olympics."

Prospects for the men's and women's GB squads looked bleak a year before Tokyo, though, amid significant cuts made to British sevens programmes.

Although funding was then obtained ahead of the Olympics via a commercial partnership struck between the RFU, Scottish Rugby, WRU and The National Lottery promotional fund, post-Tokyo uncertainty remained.

The WRU had suspended the men's Wales Sevens team in 2020 due to the impact of Covid before Richie