Dave Rennie has admitted to considerable disappointment at both George Turner’s indiscretion which cost his team dearly at Glasgow Warriors relinquished a commanding position against Montpellier last week, but also the scale of the punishment doled out.
The match turned after the hooker was sin-binned for his reckless off the ball barge on Louis Picamoles, the experienced French international No.8 who had clearly deliberately occupied an obstructive running line and Rennie was frustrated by the naivete Turner displayed in making sufficiently vigorous contact that Picamoles required treatment, drawing the attention of the match officials to the incident, but said it had not changed the way the team management feels about their player.
“I won’t divulge the conversations we had around that,” he said. “George is pretty disappointed. It was a key moment in the game, but it was only one key moment of a large number. We had pressure on them at that stage and it hurt us going into half-time. He regrets the situation. There was a bit of frustration there because there was a lot of obstruction going on off the ball. He was making an effort to get to the bloke who was carrying the ball in behind and his action probably could have been different if he had used a bit of footwork or only pushed him out of the way, but because it was a collision the judiciary got involved and he has been punished. I’m disappointed for him but he will learn from it. In the end we still love him; he’s been great for us, one of our best players. I’d say he has learned a lesson.”
While he felt the four week ban Turner subsequently received was harsh, he accepted how it came about and that his players must learn to take responsibility for their actions.
“If you compare it with the results that’s the questionable thing,” he said. “The guy had to go in for an assessment but there was no head injury. They’ve based it on a mid-term entry and that starts at six weeks. We got it down to four. It is what it is and things like that happen on the field. If you bring the judiciary you’ve got to understand that sometimes the punishments seem harsh and sometimes guys get off lightly. You’ve got to take it, but the key is not to put ourselves in that position.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here