MARK Bennett’s hopes of playing in the Calcutta Cup match a fortnight today appear to be receding. On Tuesday Vern Cotter, the Scotland coach, expressed the hope that the Glasgow centre would return from injury and turn out for his club next week then prove himself fit for the game against England at Murrayfield. But yesterday Gregor Townsend, the Warriors coach, said that match against the Ospreys on the last day of the month would possibly come too soon for Bennett.
“I’m not sure whether Mark will be able to play in Wales next week - I don’t think so,” Townsend said. “We might have thought that at the beginning of the week, but he’s got a bit of work to do. Peter Horne might have more chance.”
Both Horne and Bennett were named by Cotter in his squad of 35 for the Six Nations Championship, but the coach gave a strong hint that Alex Dunbar and Duncan Taylor would be his centre pairing for the England match. Even if Bennett’s return is delayed by another week, however, his absence because of a shoulder injury sustained while playing for Glasgow against Racing 92 earlier this month should still be shorter than originally feared.
“It seems better than at first, and we were talking about six weeks, two months at the start,” Cotter said in midweek. “He could be back within three weeks, so he may be ready for the first game. Fingers crossed.”
Two weeks on from that Champions Cup defeat in Paris, the Warriors expect to attract a record attendance for a European game when they welcome Racing to Rugby Park today - despite the absence from the French team’s ranks of the man hailed as the best player on the planet. Racing qualified for the quarter-finals of the Champions Cup last weekend, so can afford to omit New Zealand stand-off Dan Carter, who was named World Rugby’s player of the year after steering his team to the World Cup last autumn.
Glasgow’s hopes of going through to the last eight were all but ended last Sunday when they lost to Northampton, but even so they had sold more than 8,500 tickets by yesterday afternoon for the Pool 3 game, which kicks off at 5.30pm. Their previous European record was set in December 2014, when nearly 7,000 turned up for their pool game against Toulouse.
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