Glasgow Warriors receive injury boost as trio could return vs Zebre

Richie Gray, Huw Jones and George Turner are all available having stepped up their bid to return while the rest of the squad was in South Africa in recent weeks.

Gray hasn’t played since the Six Nations opener against Wales when he suffered injury while it was the final game of that tournament against Ireland when Jones and Turner were last seen.

Gray suffered a bicep injury while it was a significant finger problem for Jones while Turner picked up a foot injury before then needing to undergo surgery for appendicitis.

They’ve been big misses and their return could be huge ahead of the tough play-off run which is likely to see Glasgow only have a home quarter final unless there is some upsets this weekend.

Pete Murchie is delighted to see them back in action and the Glasgow assistant admits that even if it’s decided that they won’t be involved this weekend, their return helps prepare the rest of the squad too.

He said: “It’s certainly looking better. Richie Gray’s been training for a couple of weeks now. He’s been working away while we’ve been in South Africa, especially with the A group who played against the [Ayrshire] Bulls on Friday night and got a good result.

“He’s been training away with them. The same with George Turner. They’re certainly closer, especially Richie, to being involved. Huw Jones as well, he’s in the same boat, he’s been training with the A team guys and they’re all looking sharp.

“They’ve got a chance. It’s massive to have players coming back into the group, even just for training standards. If you’ve got 30 guys on the pitch at the same time going at each other, it means you have to be on it, so it’s a big boost having them back in. They’re obviously experienced guys.”

There’s also good news for Tom Jordan after he failed a head injury assessment with Murchie confirming he has passed all the protocols and had no issues in training.

Jordan, like the rest of the Warriors squad, was frustrated by how things went in South Africa with two defeats from two and it is likely to have cost them a top two spot in the URC.

It means they’ll likely only have a home quarter-final before needing to go away from home in the last four and potentially the final if they make it all the way through.

A bonus point win against Zebre is the first thing they’ll need to change that this weekend while hoping results elsewhere go their way too.

Murchie is confident the players will be prepared to go though and doesn’t have any fears over what will come moving forward.

He said: “We don’t fire the players up, I can assure you. The disappointment in the changing room after the Lions game was huge so there doesn’t need to be a huge amount of firing up.

“You could see by the way the guys trained at the end of last week that we’re fired up and guys want to show what we’re all about. 

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“From a coaches’ point of view, we’re almost having to rein them back rather than gee them up and get them going.

“You can put whatever spin on it you want but we learned some lessons and we got punished in terms of what we didn’t do.

“In terms of going into the knockout games and going into Friday night, we have to use that to our advantage and it may not be the worst thing for us.

“I can tell you the group was hurting after the game big time. We have to use the learnings we’ve taken from that game and put them into action, firstly this Friday.

“We obviously need to take as many points as we can from the game. There are so many different permutations and we’re not going to know until Saturday night. 

“I know it’s a bit of a cliche but the only thing we can do is take care of our own game and then see what happens with the rest of them.

“We’ve got to focus on our own performance. There are lots of things that we want to get better at and put in a performance in front of our fans that can springboard us into the quarter-finals, whoever we play.

“I think maybe from the outside people have written the script about how they expect things to pan out. But ultimately we get to determine how our season pans out. Whether we’re home, whether we’re away, we still get the opportunity to go and show what we can do and get a result, wherever we go.

“We got what we got against the Lions. We got handed a lesson and we have to take it. But regardless of where we have to go, whether it’s home or away, the objectives aren’t going to change.”