Hardie back in squad after ban
JOHN HARDIE took another step on the road to rugby rehabilitation yesterday when he was called back into the Scotland squad for the first time since serving a three-month ban for alleged cocaine abuse. The Edinburgh flanker, one of a number of big names recalled by Gregor Townsend ahead of Saturday’s crunch Six
Nations clash in Dublin, was suspended by both club and country in November for ‘gross misconduct’, with the allegations of drug use at the heart of the case.
Hardie, 29, returned to training in January and has since started two games with Richard Cockerill’s side to force his way back into the national squad.
The New Zealand-born star, who boasts three tries from 16 appearances for Scotland, could make the replacements’ bench against Ireland.
Despite the ban, Scotland assistant coach Mike Blair said it was a straightforward decision to bring him back.
‘He’s a fantastic player,’ said Blair, the former Scotland skipper. ‘He has a good pedigree and a good history playing with Scotland. When you have a player like that available, it would be silly not to have him on board.’
Asked if the coaching team had discussed Hardie’s off-field issues with the player, who offered profuse public apologies at the time of his ban, Blair said: ‘He’s had his time off. He’s been helped through that and now he can focus on his rugby.’
Richie Gray is available for the first time in this Six Nations, having overcome a calf injury to play for Toulouse last weekend.
The second-row forward returns to the squad alongside Alex Dunbar, Zander Fagerson, Darryl Marfo and Fraser Brown, while there is a new face in scrum-half George Horne.
Hardie’s Edinburgh team-mate Magnus Bradbury is also recalled to the squad following a separate disciplinary matter, when he was stripped of the club captaincy last October after suffering a head injury during a night out on the town.
On the back of a brilliant battering of England at Murrayfield last time out, Townsend is expected to stick with mostly the same starting XV on Saturday.
But Blair warned: ‘You will have tactics for certain opponents, certain players will fit that.
‘So it might be that you end up playing the same team. But, if there are ways we feel we can manipulate Ireland with different personnel, we would do that.
‘We wouldn’t just keep the same team because they’ve won. The game has moved on a bit. You can target certain teams with certain players.
‘Bringing these players in is a boost. It increases the competition we’ve had.
‘We’ve found that players coming in for injured players or experienced players who were unavailable have come in and done a really good job.
‘It makes for interesting selection meetings when you have guys coming back who are up against guys who are in form at the moment.
‘It’s not picked out of a hat, the team. There is an element of cohesion, picking guys who have played together for a while, who have won together.
‘But also you look at guys who have that special impact, the ability to change a game. Everything is weighed up.’