GRANT GILCHRIST has signed a year extension of his contract with Edinburgh, keeping him at the club until the end of May 2017.
The 25-year-old had been linked with a move to French giants Toulon, so keeping him in the Scottish capital will be viewed as something of a coup for the Scottish Rugby Union – although the bad luck he has had with injuries in recent seasons may have been a factor in reducing the options available to the second-rower as he looked ahead at the next phase of his career.
Gilchrist has 12 caps for Scotland but that total would undoubtedly be much higher were it not for his injury woes.
He led the national team on the 2014 summer tour and was named captain for that year’s Autumn Test Series, but then had to withdraw from the squad when he broke his arm playing for Edinburgh against Lyon in the European Challenge Cup. He then missed the 2015 Six Nations after being forced into surgery in order to clear up some healing complications.
That procedure seemed to have the desired effect and he made it into Scotland’s World Cup squad last September, only to suffer a groin injury against the USA which ruled him out for the remainder of the tournament.
Subsequent scans in December revealed deeper damage to the soft tissue in the groin area and he was forced back under the knife.
Then, in his first game back in five months, he fractured his arm again playing for Edinburgh against the Ospreys at the Liberty Stadium on 19th February.
He has yet to return to action after this most recent injury.