Wilson won’t worry over hole left by Hastings
Glasgow coach backs second string stand-offs to step up
GLASGOW coach Danny Wilson has declared he has every confidence in back-up stand-offs Ross Thompson and Ian Keatley as he prepares to do without Adam Hastings for a number of weeks. Last night the Warriors had yet to learn when the PRO14 will hold a disciplinary hearing into Hastings’ sending-off in his team’s defeat by Leinster at the weekend, but they are working on the presumption that he will be unavailable at least for Saturday’s game against Zebre.
21-year-old Thompson has acquitted himself well since coming into the team in recent weeks, thanks in part to his work on the training pitch with the vastly experienced Keatley, who joined Glasgow for the rest of the season in January. Even if Hastings is only suspended for a couple of weeks, he is likely to be unavailable to the Warriors in any case as he will be back in the Scotland squad – a factor which has made Keatley’s work with Thompson all the more important, according to Wilson.
“That was the reason we brought Ian in,” the coach explained. “We probably got Adam more than we thought over these [last] two games, because he came back [from injury] quicker than we expected.
“Adam would probably have come into Scotland’s reckoning pretty quickly, so we didn’t think we would have him for very long. As it happens, there’s a good chance we won’t have him for different reasons now, so to have Ross and Keats is great.
“Ian Keatley has been great for Ross to help him develop behind the scenes. Sometimes you make signings of the likes of Keats for what they can do on the field, but also what they bring in terms of helping your younger players to develop.
He’s certainly fulfilled that up to now.”
Hastings was sent off late in the first half of his team’s defeat at the RDS after catching a ball in the air and extending his right leg, which made contact with Leinster winger Cian Kelleher’s head. Wilson remains convinced there was no intent in the incident, and if a disciplinary panel agrees, the stand-off may only get a two-week ban – something which would rule him out of Scotland’s home game against Ireland on Sunday week.
“We’ll just have to wait and see how they view that one,” the coach continued.
“He was off balance, toppling backwards, and his leg came up in front of him. That left his foot in a dangerous position for the next guy coming in. We understand the safety element and that by the letter of the law it’s probably a red card, but there was no intent there.”
The Warriors could also be without Richie Gray for the game in Parma because of a head knock he received against Leinster.
“Richie did have a minor bang on the head – only a minor one – but we have to be very careful with him because of his history. It’s nothing too severe, nothing we’re massively worried about, so we’ll make the relevant decisions based on the process he goes through.
“It’s a six-day turnaround, which does have its restricting factors, so if there’s any doubt whatsoever, we won’t be playing him. We’ll see how he goes.”
It remains to be seen if
Leone Nakarawa, the other starting lock in last Sunday’s 40-21 defeat, will also sit out the Zebre match. The Fijian, who is leaving Glasgow for Ulster in the summer, still looks well short of match fitness since returning from a knee injury that kept him out of action for several months.
“He’s got a lot of work to do, hasn’t he?, if I’m being brutally honest,” Wilson said. “Any player who has been out of the game for a long period of time needs a bit of time to get back into things. And I’m sure that Leone will bounce back to that type of form by getting more match fit and through the knee and leg being more comfortable in games.
“He’s fit to play, but we probably need to get him match fit. We’ll see how the next few weeks go with that process.”
While Hastings, Gray and Nakarawa have all presented Wilson with problems of various kinds, the emergence of several other young players in addition to Thompson has convinced the coach to be optimistic for next season and indeed for the rest of the current campaign.
“We had Cole Forbes and Rufus McLean learning lessons in Leinster and that will do them a world of good for next season and beyond,” he added.
SPORTS leaders have urged the Scottish Government to stump up the cash to help the sector re-open after Covid amid warnings that a large number of leisure centres and swimming pools could stay shut for good.
A 35-strong delegation of governing bodies met with Sports Minister Mairi Gougeon on yesterday to plead the case for extra help, both for themselves and for the facilities which, they underlined, keep the nation active.
The grouping are arguing for the value of sport in coping with the long-term impact of coronavirus to be recognised following claims that Holyrood has done less to safeguard the future of the country’s sporting infrastructure than in England and Wales.
“We are all keen to play our part in restarting and shaping the future of sport as we emerge from the Covid-19 restrictions over the next few months and today’s discussions will support this approach,” said the group’s chair Vinny Bryson.
“All our governing bodies are keen to have the clubs and members they represent at the heart of the nation’s mental and physical recovery from this pandemic. For the nation to rebuild and thrive again, it must be an active one.”
But there are huge risks in the offing, it has been claimed, with the massive extra costs for Covid-proofing centres and the drastic limits in numbers being allowed to enter facilities at any one time when they eventually re-open already posing a huge headache to operators.
Findings from Community Leisure Scotland, which represents the sector, suggests only 35 per cent of facilities will reopen as soon as lockdown ends. And 18 centres and eight swimming pools are thought to be at risk of shutting shop for good with one major leisure complex in Alloa already earmarked for closure.
SO, a French referee made a couple of mistakes and England lost a couple of tries to Wales at the weekend because of those umpiring errors. So what?
With people still dying in large numbers from Covid-19, why does anybody even care about the vagaries of playing international rugby? And anyway, isn’t rugby supposed to be a game in which the referee’s decision is final, even if he is wrong, even after a television replay shows that he’s wrong?
As it happens, even though he has apologised for mistakes, I don’t think Pascal Gauzere was wrong about the second try scored by Liam Williams after Louis Rees-Zammit appeared to knock the ball on. By a strict interpretation of the knock-on law as it is usually cited, though Rees-Zammit knocked the ball forward he did not complete a knock-on as the ball did not hit the ground or another player. Instead it hit his leg, went backwards and rebounded off the leg of Henry Slade allowing Williams to score. And in any case, Wales would have won the match because English indiscipline handed them many more scoring opportunities than the referee.
World Rugby’s online law book is as clear as mud on the knock-on issue and seems to think a knock-on is something everybody knows about as it has to be self-evident. Except that it is not, as that Welsh try showed. Perhaps law 11 should be better defined and then there would be no confusion.
World Rugby has another job to do. At the time of writing, the Six Nations Board has not decided about what needs to be done about the postponed France v Scotland match. I warned some time before the tournament started that there might be serious problems completing the 2021 Guinness Six Nations as planned, and my fear is that Scotland’s visit to Paris will be banned by the French Government. As has been speculated, that could mean Scotland being awarded a 28-0 victory, but the alternative is that the match is postponed to a date when Scotland would have to send ten players back to their clubs to comply with the release rules. World Rugby should step in and, if the match is to be played during a release period, then they should order that Scotland be allowed to retain all members of the squad – tough on the clubs that pay their wages, I know, but having sanctioned the tournament, World Rugby has a duty to ensure Scotland is not disadvantaged because some players and coaches of France clearly did not follow their Covid-19 rules.
Which brings me to the British and Irish Lions and their summer tour of South Africa. I know no bigger fan of the Lions than me, and I think I showed that in the book Once Were
HOGG WILD: Scotland star Stuart Hogg in action for the British and Irish Lions last time they toured, in 2017
Lions which I co-wrote with my old chum Jeff Connor. It didn’t sell a million but it didn’t do too badly, and it contains some cracking interviews, even though I say so myself, with several Lions who are no longer with us. Therefore it is with considerable sadness that I have to suggest that this summer’s tour must be cancelled, or at least postponed to 2022.
Does anyone seriously think that the global coronavirus pandemic will be over by June? South Africa is reeling under the attack of the pandemic, and has suffered 1.6million positive cases, with 50,000 dead. Furthermore, in the past few days, concern has grown about a new South African-based variant of the virus which is apparently more contagious and damaging than the original virus. Vaccination rollout has been slow but is improving, and there is a downward trend in the number of cases, but no one is predicting when South Africa will be safe to visit.
The whole point about the Lions is that they are a touring team, and it would go completely against the grain if the three Test matches were move to the home unions as has been suggested. And where would those three tests be played? London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Dublin – three into four doesn’t go, and a huge fight would erupt, so that idea must bite the dust now.
The Lions’ tour to South Africa will just be too risky this summer and the likelihood is that if it goes ahead, the Tour will be played in front of empty stadia, and we have all seen how underwhelming that is. The home unions and World Rugby must bite the bullet and cancel or perhaps postpone the tour until such times as players can travel safely and fans are back on seats.