Van der Merwe has high hopes for the young generation

THE young talent at Glasgow Warriors has really impressed winger DTH van der Merwe since he returned to the club — and he believes the up-andcoming players will have a big part to play during the remainder of their Guinness Pro14 title bid.

The Canadian international winger now has 45 tries in 97 appearances for the Scotstoun outfit after he bagged two tries and the man-of-the-match award following Friday’s 68-7 rout of Zebre.

Already safely through to the end-of-season play-offs, the Warriors are next in action in 13 days’ time away to Scarlets.

And since returning to the club where he made his name a couple of weeks ago, van der Merwe, 31, has liked what he has seen from younger players like Adam Hastings and others.

‘I could see in training before this match that the young guys here were of a great standard and a few of them showed that in the match on Friday night,’ he explained.

‘In the modern game you need to have a lot of strength in depth to compete and some of the Academy guys who are now full-time are looking good.

‘The shape we like to play is similar to my first time here, obviously a lot of personnel has changed, but I have settled back in easily.

‘I think on Friday night the boys played really well. The forwards really fronted up and the collisions, the scrums, the tackles and all those parts of the game were top notch.

‘That made it a good game for the likes of me because we got a lot of ball out wide and managed to finish a few chances off.

‘It sounds like the old cliché, but we have to just take every game as it comes now as we build up to the play-offs. We want to make sure we are in peak form by that stage of the season.’

On his ‘new’ winger, Warriors head coach Dave Rennie said: ‘He’s a good finisher, isn’t he?

‘It was nice to have him out there, and I think he enjoyed that — it was a nice homecoming for him to have.’

Rennie now has four players — Ruaridh Jackson, Matt Fagerson, Lee Jones and George Horne — heading off on Scotland Sevens duty.

They will miss the Scarlets game due to the Commonwealth Games, but there are still plenty of Scotland stars to return.

He said: ‘We’ll probably have a few more boys coming back in (for the next game), which will be great, but a number of boys made a statement against Zebre.

‘We want competition for places and a lot of the guys put their hand up and gave me good food for thought.’