Cotter’s Scots hit by twin torment
Gilchrist and Weir miss Six Nations with injury
SCOTLAND'S Si x Nations preparations suffered a double blow last night with the news that both Grant Gilchrist and duncan Weir look set to miss the entire campaign.
Stand- off Weir will undergo surgery on his arm after sustaining a bicep injury against Edinburgh last month, with Glasgow Warriors head coach Gregor Townsend revealing: ‘I would like to think it won’t be the end of his season but I think it rules out the Six Nations.
‘With a bicep injury, you’re talking months rather than weeks.’
Gilchrist’s recovery from a broken arm, meanwhile, has progressed slower than first anticipated.
Scotland’s l ast match i n the tournament is on March 21 at home to Ireland and it was hoped that the man Vern cotter had chosen to be his skipper before the autumn Tests may have returned in time to play in at least one game.
That now seems unlikely, with Gilchrist’s club coach at Edinburgh, alan Solomons, saying yesterday: ‘He won’t be back until mid-March. That’s a guesstimate from me, but things have got to be right.’
The 24-year-old second-row, who has eight caps, was named captain of Scotland in October only for him to suffer an injury to his arm a few days later playing for his club in a European Rugby challenge cup match against Lyon.
His absence allowed cotter to pair Richie and Jonny Gray together for the first time, with the brothers both impressing with their performances.
Meanwhile, luckless Gilchrist’s Edinburgh team-mate Hamish Watson is looking to get his career back on track tonight against connacht in what will be his first start in over two months.
The back-row’s assured early-season displays in the Pro12 earned him a call-up to train with the Scotland squad, but just five days after that it was announced he broke h is jaw playing against Lyon — the same match Gilchrist was injured in.
It meant that, during a week when he was supposed to be working with the national squad, he was, instead, staying in bed most of the time and struggling to eat properly following an operation to insert plates in his jaw.
‘ The f i rst two weeks after I sustained the injury were pretty bleak,’ he said. ‘I had to eat a lot of scrambled eggs because it was difficult to swallow other things, so it was pretty nasty and I think I bored my flatmate because I was pretty frustrated.
‘To be playing for Edinburgh and on the fringes of the Scotland squad to suffering an injury like that was annoying, but it was only two months that I was out for and there is still a good portion of the season for me to start playing well again.’
Manchester- born Watson, 23, qualifies for Scotland through his grandparents and, after he earned Under-20 caps in 2011 while part of the Leicester Tigers academy, he joined Edinburgh later that year.
This has been his breakthrough season, though, and yesterday it was announced that he will be staying in the capital until at least 2017.
He believes working with head coach Solomons has brought him on as a player and he is aiming to repay the faith shown in him.
‘It was great to get a full preseason under my belt with alan this time around as last season he arrived too late for that,’ Watson explained. ‘That gave me a chance to prove myself and I managed to play in the first pre-season match against Leicester Tigers. That put me in a good place for the league opener at Munster and things have taken off from there really.’
Having had a period away from the game, Watson — who came off the bench against Glasgow last week — is now fully focused on the match tonight in Galway where Edinburgh will be looking for their sixth win in eight matches.
Watson said: ‘It will be a really tough game, but hopefully we can go there and get the win and then really put in a challenge for a top-six place come the end of the season.’
EDINBURGH: J Cuthbert; D Fife, M Scott, P Burleigh, T Visser; G Tonks, S HidalgoClyne; A Dickinson, R Ford (capt), WP Nel, A Bresler, B Toolis, R Grant, D Denton, H Watson. Subs: N Cochrane, R Sutherland, J Andress, F McKenzie, T Leonardi, S Kennedy, J Te Rure, A Strauss.