Tommy Seymour will be given every chance to prove his fitness for Saturday’s Champions Cup quarter-final against Saracens, but whether or not the international winger makes it, their fire-power looks set to be considerably enhanced for the encounter.
After months struggling with shoulder problems, George Horne has been cleared to share scrum-half duties with Ali Price, but perhaps most importantly, confidence is growing that Seymour’s fellow British & Irish Lion Stuart Hogg will be fit
“George Horne will definitely be back. We expect Hoggy to be back. With Tommy Seymour, there’s still a question-mark,” head coach Dave Rennie reported yesterday.“We’re not too worried about Tommy’s ability to slot straight back in (but) we’re obviously just conscious of the fact that it’s a massive game for us and we don’t want to be waiting until the 11th hour to make a decision.
‘We’ve got good depth in and around that position, so we’ll probably make a call on it by Thursday,” said Rennie.
He was confident, too, that play-maker Pete Horne, who underwent treatment for a knee injury during Saturday’s defeat of the Cheetahs, will recover in time, saying: “Pete got a bit of a knock, but we’re confident that he’s going to be OK to play. He didn’t train today, but he should be back out running on Thursday.”
One of the great frustrations of Rennie’s two seasons in Glasgow has been the lack of availability of the talismanic, but repeatedly injured Hogg and the coach light-heartedly noted that the full-back is eager to improve his attendance record.
“He said he wants to get to 25-per-cent of the games I’ve coached before he leaves… so he’ll probably need to play every other game from now on for that to happen!” joked Rennie. “But, yeah, he’s desperate to play. He would have loved to have gone out there last week, but it just wasn’t quite right and we didn’t want to push it. He’s important to us, in terms of his gas, his experience and also the quality of his kicking game. He did a really good job last time we played at Sarries, so he’s keen to play and we’re also keen to get him out there.”
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