Nigel Carolan has confirmed that Eben Etzebeth has escaped punishment for an incident involving Henco Venter in Glasgow Warriors’ defeat to the Sharks.
During a flare-up between both sets of players on Saturday, Etzebeth - South Africa’s record cap holder - raised his hand and connected with Venter’s face. Furious Warriors fans on social media accused Etzebeth of gouging his fellow countryman but Venter didn’t report anything and the incident has been cleared by the citing commission.
“I mean we saw that as well,” Carolan confirmed. “Look, Henco didn’t report anything and it was [something] the citing commissioner has refuted and he’s passed it as acceptable.
“Some of the optics don’t look great on it but I think when you slow down everything into a freeze frame there are many instances that can look worse than they are. We’re certainly not pursuing anything with that.”
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Despite losing 28-24, Glasgow picked up two bonus points in the bruising encounter in South Africa but they’ve been dealt an injury blow to Nathan McBeth.
The loosehead prop was forced off around the half-hour mark and Carolan admits the diagnosis isn’t great.
The Warriors attack coach confirmed: “He’s probably the one that’s come out worst of all [from Sharks game]. Unfortunately, he did his MCL on his knee so he’ll need to nurse himself back to recovery.
"We’re fortunate that we’ve got Rory Sutherland and Jamie Bhatti with us here and they’re both raring to go. Outside of that, George Horne picked up a bang on his leg but everyone else is all good.”
Ahead of facing the Sharks, Glasgow were dealt a blow after a scan showed that Kyle Steyn’s leg injury was worse than initially feared.
The Warriors are yet to discover the full extent of Steyn’s injury but Carolan confirmed the winger will almost certainly miss the weekend clash against the Stormers with his involvement with Scotland next month in extreme jeopardy.
Carolan added: “It’s still being investigated and hopefully he’ll get a bit more clarity on it this week but it’s unlikely he’ll be available this week or maybe the following week.”
“We’ve beaten them on the last three occasions and I suppose the only flip side of that is that all three were at Scotstoun,” Carolan added.
”The circumstances have changed this week in that we’re now on their home patch.
“Over the last few weeks they’ve been on the road and they probably haven’t had the best of form but they are a serious animal when they are at home and they’ve got their international players available again this weekend.
"So we can expect to see maybe Manie Libbok and Frans Malherbe taking to the pitch, and they haven’t had them for the past few weeks so I think they’ll be boosted by their return.
“But the reason we beat them on the last few occasions was by trying to put the best version of our game on the pitch, no matter what they throw at us. They have a sprinkle of stardust right across their team and a very physical forward pack.
The Stormers clash proceeds the international break with Scotland hosting four tests at Scottish Gas Murrayfield and Carolan hopes Glasgow will be rewarded for their intense work later in the season.
“We’ve chopped and changed every week and that’s natural with the composition of our squad,” he added. “We’ve had at least six or seven changes each week. It’s trying to get the balance between giving enough game time to our international players for the Autumn internationals but also allowing our younger players to develop in the Warriors way.
"I think we’ve done that really well but it means we haven’t hit our straps yet. It’s a long season and there will be patches of it when we will be without our international players.
"We feel our other players will be better prepared to step up when those moments arrive. We need to keep the results ticking over so we are well-placed for the end of the season.
"You usually find that teams without loads of internationals come out of the blocks really hard and they raise some eyebrows but it’s about sustaining that over the season. We don’t get overly worried about it.
"We know what we are building and how we are trying to build the machine - that machine is about everyone in our squad.”
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