Glasgow and Scotland awaiting news on Hogg ankle injury scan
Glasgow and Scotland are awaiting news on the ankle injury which forced star fullback Stuart Hogg to return home early from his club’s two-week trip to South Africa for Guinness Pro14 games against the Cheetahs and Southern Kings.
Hogg picked up an ankle problem in the home win over Munster on 7 September but was deemed fit enough to travel to South Africa.
He was not considered fit enough for Saturday’s 52-24 win in Bloemfontein but even last week Glasgow head coach Dave Rennie considered it a minor problem and expected Hogg to be fine to face the Kings in Port Elizabeth this Saturday.
Instead the full-back has flown home and Warriors assistant coach Kenny Murray said it was now a case of wait and see over the extent of Hogg’s problem.
“He got that injury really early on in the Munster game and we thought just a week or so he would be able to recover from it but it is still giving him a few problems,” said Murray.
“It is better he goes back and gets it scanned. He will get a scan today [Tuesday] and we will get the results pretty soon and know if anything else is needed or if there is any treatment required.
“It was an innocuous thing and it was maybe a bit sore early on [against Munster] but we got medical treatment at the time. As far as we were concerned it was good to continue and play. It was one of those ones that was fine dur-
0 Stuart Hogg picked up the injury in the home win over Munster.
ing the game but after it he felt a bit pain in it.”
Glasgow will hope to have Hogg back for next month’s Heineken Champions Cup games at the latest, while Scotland coach Gregor Townsend will also be keen to know the extent of the ankle problem as the autumn Tests approach.
“We don’t know,” said Murray on the timescale. “It might be nothing wrong but we will find out the extent of it. It could be nothing but for us and Scotland we want it scanned quickly.”
Murray admitted another ankle injury, the one suffered by tighthead prop Zander Fagerson which makes it unlikely he will feature for Scotland in November, had cast a shadow on the mini South Africa tour.
“It was a good win at the weekend [against Cheetahs] but having a player like that injured took the gloss of it a fair bit,” said the coach.
“He has a lower leg fracture
– on the ankle – so he is arriving in Cape Town as we speak, and he’ll be joining back up with the squad today and will stay with us until we fly home after the Kings game.
“He’s had excellent medical care in South Africa and when he gets back home he will go for further scans and that will let us know the extent of how long he is going to be out for. We can’t put a time on it at the moment, but it is likely to be months rather than weeks – we’ll have to see what the medics say back in Scotland.”
Murray said it was imperative Glasgow kept up the early momentum of the season which has been put in place.
“[After Kings] we’ve got two home games, Dragons then Zebre and they’ll be games we’re confident about, but I’m sure Cardiff were confident going to Zebre at the weekend and obviously lost. Obviously Saracens are going to pose a different threat in three weeks.” The credibility of Olympic sport will be damaged in the eyes of the public if the Russian Anti-doping Agency is reinstated this week, says American antidoping chief Travis Tygart.
Rusada has been suspended since November 2015 when an investigation funded by the World Anti-doping Agency (Wada) revealed widespread cheating in Russian athletics. That bleak picture was extended to more than 1,000 athletes in over 30 sports when a second investigation in 2016, led by Professor Richard Mclaren, uncovered evidence of a state-sponsored doping programme.
That ultimately led to Russia being forced to send a neutral team to this year’s Winter Games but pressure has been mounting on Wada to lift Rusada’s ban so the world’s largest country can be fully restored to the Olympic and Paralympic fold.
This would mean Wada backing down on the last two criteria on a “roadmap to compliance” agreed with Russia. Having made steady progress on the 29 other criteria, Russia has refused to “publicly accept” the findings of the Mclaren report and allow independent access to the data and stored samples held at its Moscow antidoping laboratory.
Wada’s executive committee meets in the Seychelles tomorrow and is expected to approve a compromise that will let Russia implicitly accept a weaker assessment of the state’s involvement in the conspiracy and maintain control over access to the lab’s secrets.
United States Anti-doping Agency (USADA) chief executive Tygart said: If you are truly sorry you would apologise to the people you have offended and do everything you can to make good.
“Access to the Moscow lab is also absolutely fundamental. There are literally thousands of cases – presumptive positives for 4,500 athletes – that could be prosecuted. Thursday’s decision is critical for the continuing credibility of the Olympic movement – get it wrong and the public will lose faith.”