The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Pair agree to remain at Warriors
Scrum-half Sean Kennedy and hooker Johnny Matthews have both signed short-term contract extensions with Glasgow.
With Warriors set to lose a host of players during an extended autumn international schedule, the club has re-signed the pair until the end of 2020.
Kennedy, 29, has made seven appearances in two stints with the club stretching back to 2012, when he was on a season-long loan from Edinburgh.
Matthews, 27, initially joined Glasgow from Boroughmuir on a three-month deal at the beginning of the 2019-20 season and earned an extension until the end of the campaign.
Head coach Danny Wilson said: “With the proposed international window, it is evident we will need further cover at scrum-half as we could be without Ali (Price) and George (Horne) for an extended period of time.
“I have been impressed with Sean watching him from afar. He has trained well during this recent period and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with him over the coming months.
“There is a strong possibility we will lose hookers to both Scotland and Fiji during the international window and again being able to retain a Scottish talent that has been part of the Warriors squad is a boost ahead of the new campaign.
“Johnny has gone well in the past for the Warriors and has been training well during the most recent window.”
Richard Cockerill’s selection for Edinburgh’s Guinness PRO14 semi-final against Ulster is not without its risks, but he still has enough options to pick any XV that should be good enough to reach the final.
Scotland lock Ben Toolis returns for the first time since lockdown and shoulder surgery, while Jamie Ritchie is on the bench similarly having had no minutes at all in the two games since rugby emerged from the pandemic.
Cockerill has left his talismanic loose head Pierre Schoeman on the bench but apart from Henry Pyrgos, he has a full squad to select from, and selection decisions have led to a somewhat “tetchy” week on the training field.
“Schoeman wants to start but he hasn’t played as well as (Rory) Sutherland in the last couple of weeks, so Sutherland gets to start because that’s the right thing to do,” said Cockerill.
“We’ve got that (choice) in a few positions. There are six very good frontrowers there. You could have picked either front row and there would not have been much of an eyebrow raised. I pick on current form and these three are the best to start.
“You can tell Schoeman is pretty cheesed off the way he has been racing around training this week and he will bring that energy when he gets on the field.
“It is an 80-minute, 23-man game and those three who come off the bench in the front row have to really show what they can offer.
“We were poor at the set-piece last weekend scrum wise and that has to be a hell of a lot better.”
Toolis and Ritchie’s inclusions, even though they didn’t play any part of the double-header against Glasgow in the last fortnight, is based on their training ground play but also, obviously, a question of pure quality.