Scotland stars boost Warriors in Cardiff
Six members of the Scotland squad which lost in Dublin last weekend have been given an early chance to get back on the horse by Glasgow Warriors head coach Danny Wilson.
Rather than taking a couple of weeks off, as has happened in the past, scrum-half Ali Price, centres Sam Johnson and Kyle Steyn, prop Zander Fagerson, hooker Fraser Brown and flanker Rory Darge will line-up in the Warriorsstartingxvforthisevening’s United Rugby Championship clash away to Cardiff.
Wilson has made eight changes in total to the side which took the field in last Friday’s 1872 Cup victory over Edinburgh at Scotstoun, with Jamie Bhatti recovering from a hand injury to be selected at loose-head prop, and Ross Thompson making his first start since January ahead of Duncan Weir at stand-off.
The coach insisted that the players dropped from the team which beat Edinburgh should not feel snubbed.
“Normally when you come back after a Six Nations or an Autumnseries,itisgameafter game after game, so you rest them very quickly because there isn’t a chance coming up to do that, but we’ve got two games now then, a week off with no game, so we’ll manage our players over that period a little bit differently,” explained Wilson.
“You’ll see a few of the boys who started that game [against Edinburgh] come back in next week against Zebre in place of a couple of the internationals.
“We feel like our squad has achievedahugeamount,winning five out of eight before the Six Nations, then four out of five during the Six Nations. Nowit’saboutwhetherwecan takethatwholedepthofsquad andusethatoverthenexttwo games to get two wins.
“It’s a case of being very upfront and honest with your players, to say: ‘Look, we believe we’ve got some real depth here and this is the best way to manage our squad’.”
Wilson added: “Matt Fagerson has unfortunately rebroken his arm so will leave him unavailable for selection for us for at least four weeks. There may well be surgery needed but until I get that from the surgeon we will wait and see. George Turner took a head-knock in the last game for Scotland and isn’t quite right yet, and Sione Tuipulotu has got a bit of a hamstring niggle we need to get to the bottom of.”