George Horne admits Scotland snub was 'wake-up call'

The Glasgow Warriors star made no secret over his ‘disappointment’ after Gregor Townsend omitted him completely from his squad to face Fiji and South Africa. 

It was widely believed that Horne would start at scrum-half in the opening test against Fiji with first-choice Ben White unavailable but Gregor Towsend completely omitted him from the squad. 

Townsend's assertion that Ali Price was Scotland’s ‘in-form’ scrum-half raised eyebrows with Jamie Dobie named on the bench. 

Horne was also overlooked for the defeat to the Springboks but he worked relentlessly and was delighted his starting display against Portugal earned him minutes from the bench in the statement win over Australia., 

“It was disappointing,” Horne admitted on missing the opening two tests. “Obviously I wanted to play, you want to be involved in every game when you're in the squad and to be honest, I took it as a bit of a kick up the backside. It’s probably not been the start of the season I would have hoped for, it's been a bit disrupted and whatnot.

“I was proud of myself for the way I responded in training and just my general work ethic around the team. Thankfully I got a chance against Portugal and then Australia and I was just delighted to be part of the team again.

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“I'm the type of player who needs to work hard to get mentally in the right frame of mind. If my standards had slipped before, it was definitely a wake-up call. I can honestly say I did everything I could to get myself back in that team and  to get on against Australia and not do anything special but just execute when we needed to in the last 15 minutes, it was a good feeling.”

Horne was determined to return immediately for Glasgow and he played the full 80 minutes in the scrappy 17-15 win over the Scarlets on Friday night. 

Franco Smith’s attention will now switch to the European Champions Cup with English Premiership side Sale visiting Scotstoun next Friday. Glasgow’s URC title success has led to many pundits labelling them dark horses to go far in Europe. 

But while Horne insists the Warriors dressing room aren’t paying any attention to their billing, the squad want to replicate that winning feeling from last season. 

“It’s genuinely not something we’ve really mentioned,” said Horne on the dark horses tag. “I guess with a lot of changes in the squad last week, it was very much focused on getting everything nailed down for the Scarlets game and now we'll look ahead to Europe.

“Cliched as it is, we’ll take it one game at a time. There are so many strong teams in Europe, you've got to be on your game and you can't look too far ahead. 

“The European Cup is so special. We obviously want to win the league, but to go far in Europe is a massive goal of the squad as well. We were disappointed after our loss to Harlequins last year, so this year we want to go as far as we can.

“We know every game's going to be really, really tough and we're going to have to play a lot better than we did on Friday night if we want to get a result.”

On replicating the winning feeling from the URC success, Horne added: “Absolutely, that's why we all play - to try to win stuff. Having had a taste of that, everyone here wants more. Europe again is another step up with the English teams and the French teams coming in, they're so strong as well. We're going to have to bring all the form we had at the end of last year and more if we want to go as far as we can.”

Glasgow were eliminated in harsh fashion from the Champions Cup in harsh circumstances last season but Horne is determined to avenge those memories and he feels the team has improved since then.

Especially in knock-out rugby, it's really disappointing when you lose,” Horne added. “We were on the cusp of a massive away win that would have put us into a quarter-final in Europe. So it was a low point but also a huge turning point for the squad.

“It was the first time we knew we could compete with the best teams away from home. Then look what happened at the end of the season, we had another couple of really disappointing defeats away to the Lions and the Bulls and then that kind of springboarded us into that playoff run. 

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“We don't want to lose at all but sometimes you've got to take the lessons and get better from it and I think we did that.

“We lost the European final, we lost against Munster in the URC quarters a couple of years ago, we lost that Quins game. It took those three losses for us to take a lot of learnings, and we then made little adjustments in the play-off run last year. 

“We found ways to get it done, so I think we're a more mature and more complete team overall now. Hopefully we can carry on with that.”