CONFIRMATION of Stuart Hogg’s return is a timely boost for Glasgow Warriors, but there is no place in the starting team for his regular international colleagues Jonny Gray and Pete Horne as their coach takes an abrasive approach to today’s Champions Cup quarter-final meeting with Saracens.
In Horne’s case, the knee injury that ended his involvement in last week’s win over the Cheetahs was a contributory factor to the re-modelling of the midfield. However Gray, who was dropped from the Scotland starting team for that meeting with England, again finds himself on the bench, purely on form.
“It’s more about Scott Cummings,” said Dave Rennie, Warriors’ head coach. “He’s done an excellent job around calling our lineout, he’s made really good shifts around his physicality, he’s a really good athlete, runs good lines. He’s just played really well. We wanted to reward that. He is a big part of our defensive lineout, our defensive maul and so on. We’d just like to stick with the combination we had last week so Jonny will make an impact off the bench this week.”
Sam Johnson was always going to be reintroduced to head back to London a fortnight after his heroics in scoring the try which retained the Calcutta Cup, but the way that Sam McDowall and Kyle Steyn imposed themselves against the Cheetahs is reflected in the inclusion of both, the former shifting to outside centre and the latter to the wing, but clearly it is the return of the talismanic Hogg that offers most encouragement.
READ MORE: Daring call on Darcy Graham but Edinburgh key men are the leaders of the pack
“You can imagine he is at his effervescent best, “ Rennie said of the international full-back. “He is desperate to be out there and he brings a lot of confidence. Obviously, he is lethal with the ball in hand but the quality of his kicking game is really important for us this week as well. We’re rapt to have him back.”
There is an obvious added benefit in having such experienced performers on the bench, not least because it was in the closing stages that things got away from Glasgow on their visit to Saracens in the last of their pool matches back in January.
“We are minus a couple of backs from last time we played them, Nick Grigg, Tommy Seymour and DTH van der Merwe are all out injured, but we’ve got some pretty good depth,” said Rennie. “Callum Gibbins didn’t play last time, so we’ve got better depth throughout which means our bench is a bit stronger this time.”
Those two previous meetings this season, allied to facing one another on the only previous time Glasgow reached the Champions Cup quarter-finals two years ago, means the sides know one another well and while Saracens have won every time the sides have met one another in Europe, Rennie believes his team should now have sufficient understanding of what they are up against to have a chance of over-turning the odds.
“They have played us twice and won both games, they’ve also won a handful of European titles and a lot of English Premiership titles, so I think there is no doubt that they will be favourites, but we’re not trying to claim an underdog status,” he said.
“We’re going to go down there and throw everything at it, and we’re certainly not satisfied just being part of the group that made it out of the pools, we want to create a bit of history. We’re clear in what we need to do. We know where the opportunities are and we know where their threats are as well. The key is that we’ve got to be good enough for 80-minutes. Ultimately, it comes down to winning the key moments – you are not going to win them all – so you have to be really resilient without the ball and really clinical with it and if we manage that for a big chunk of the 80 minutes then we’ve got a chance.”
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