FOOT INJURY PUTS ‘GUTTED’ PRICE OUT OF TOURNAMENT

ALI PRICE described himself as ‘gutted’ after his World Cup campaign was ended by a foot injury. The Scotland scrum-half joined knee-injury victim Hamish Watson on the flight home and will be replaced in the squad by Edinburgh’s Henry Pyrgos. Price took to social media and said: ‘Short-lived but incredibly proud to have made the field at a World Cup. Gutted now but I’ll be all good — looking forward to supporting the boys for the rest of the tournament and getting myself back on the field for Glasgow.’ The Scotland management team had hoped Price (right) would recover from the injury he picked up in the defeat to Ireland. He boarded the bullet train from Tokyo on crutches with the rest of the Scotland squad and was given a scan in Kobe late on Monday evening which showed the injury was so severe it would rule him out for the rest of the competition. His replacement Pyrgos is scheduled to arrive in Japan tomorrow and take his place in the 31-man group preparing to face Samoa at the Kobe Misaki Stadium on Monday. It will be Pyrgos’s second World Cup campaign having previously been involved in 2015. He earned the last of his 27 caps in the home win over Australia in 2017. ‘We’re disappointed for Ali to have to return home so early in the tournament,’ said Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend. ‘Both Ali and Hamish had invested a lot of effort into being in their best physical shape for the World Cup and it’s a shame they’ve only been involved in one game. ‘However, we have a lot of belief in our wider group and the two new players, Magnus Bradbury, who replaces Hamish, and Henry Pyrgos, who replaces Ali, who have been given this opportunity.’ Greig Laidlaw was always going to be Scotland’s first-choice scrum-half and play in the big games, with Price his deputy. It now means George Horne moves up one place in the pecking order and will be on the bench against Samoa and Japan. Pyrgos is likely to see action against Pool A minnows Russia. Either Jamie Ritchie or John Barclay will replace Watson at seven in the starting line-up against Samoa.