LISA Thomson and her Scotland teammates are just one game away from a potential place at the Rugby World Cup 2021.

And the proud Borderer admits that qualifying for the tournament in new Zealand has been a dream for years and would mean ‘everything’ to her.

As the top ranked team, Scotland will play Colombia in Dubai this afternoon  Friday February 25 with the winner booking their place in Pool A alongside hosts New Zealand, Australia and Wales.

The game kicks off at 3pm UK time and can be watched on BBC Alba.

11 teams have already qualified for the tournament including New Zealand, England, France, Canada, USA, Australia and Wales, who qualified through their final ranking at Ireland 2017, and South Africa, Fiji, Italy and Japan who qualified through their regions.

In September 2021, Scotland kept their qualification alive with a breath-taking fightback to beat Ireland in the final moments of the game to ensure that qualification for next year’s Rugby World Cup remains within their grasp.

The two-point, thrill-laden encounter was settled with a late try that made in the Scottish Borders.

Lisa started the move before Lana Skeldon fed fellow Borderer Chloe Rollie who ran in for a tremendous touch-down which was converted by the ice-cool Sarah Law.

After touching down in Dubai, Lisa kindly took time to speak to the Border Telegraph.

“It’s super exciting that we are out here and we have one game to go.

“Getting to the World Cup would mean everything. We’ve been speaking about it as a group. It’s been a dream since 2016 and it’s been out one focus since we lost the qualifiers in Spain in 2016. So it would mean everything, especially a 15s world cup in New Zealand.

“We watched Columbia play Spain last week but we don’t know a too much about them as there hasn’t been much rugby played for a couple of years due to Covid. So we are just going to focus on ourselves going into that final game. And it’s good to have the fellow Borderers around. We hopefully understand each other and it’s good that we are all about.

“We have a couple of double (training) days and a couple of days off and we will watch the Columbia v Khazikstan game at the stadium, so we will get a feel for the stadium and the atmosphere. Then we will really hit the ground running next week going into the game. It’s getting close now.”

It’s been a busy period for Lisa who competed for Team GB in last year’s Olympics, narrowly missing out on a medal. So how does this compare?

“It’s completely different” she told us: “To me that’s two different side of the game and there were slightly different goals, but both are pinnacles of the sport. It’s super exciting. The Olympics are the pinnacle of the Sevens at the moment, but a 15s world cup is the pinnacle. It’s not comparable."