GLASGOW Warriors embark on the month that, according to Peter Horne, their international centre, will define their season, bolstered by news that two of their star imports, Josh Strauss and Leona Nakarawa, have committed to extended stays with the Scotstoun-based club.
GLASGOW Warriors embark on the month that, according to Peter Horne, their international centre, will define their season, bolstered by news that two of their star imports, Josh Strauss and Leona Nakarawa, have committed to extended stays with the Scotstoun-based club.
The signings come at a good time for the club ?? Stuart Hogg and Lee Jones did the same thing recently ?? but will not be allowed to distract the players from the immediate task at hand, which is to travel to Toulouse at the weekend and try to put the club on the verge of a European breakthrough.
"It is a big time for the club coming up," said Horne. "We have two games against Toulouse, then we have Munster [the team they beat in the PRO12 semi-final last season] and after that, the Edinburgh matches back to back. They are all massive games that everybody is desperate to be involved in so I have to keep on raising my game.
"There is a lot of competition for places here with five or six guys pushing for spots in the centre or fly-half. Everybody has been really intense in training, everybody is switched on and there is a real drive towards this game. Personally I have to keep working to make sure I keep my spot."
Fortunately, for all of them, there is no real danger of attention wavering; preparing to play Toulouse in the fervent atmosphere of the Stade Ernest Wallon is enough to guarantee that. "There has been a big emphasis on what a tough task it is," Horne added. "Toulouse is a really intimidating place to play but we want to go over there and silence the crowd, get right on top of them with our defence, get turnovers and give ourselves the opportunity to score.
"These are the sort of games you dream of as a kid. Everyone would watch Toulouse and big European Cup games and there would be a real buzz about it. It will be a great place to go the crowd will make it a real cauldron but if we can silence them it could work for us. They have some really good players, lots of big men as well, so we have to make sure we are up for that test."
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 hereComments are closed on this article