MISSING out on the 39-man training squad for the Six Nations selected by Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend last month was a blow for George Horne, although his lack of game time since the end of November – 52 minutes from four bench appearances – meant that it wasn’t a complete shock. Now he is determined to use this window when club-mate Ali Price is away on international duty to build form through regular game-time for Glasgow Warriors.
The 26-year-old has now started the last two matches for the Scotstoun outfit, helping the team to back-to-back wins over Connacht away and Munster at home, and although he has not given up hope of elbowing his way back into Scotland contention for the final three matches of this year’s Six Nations campaign, he says he is focussed on helping his club push their way up the United Rugby Championship table [they are now third, behind Leinster on points difference].
“There are a lot of games in this window, more than we expected at the start of the year [due to several re-arranged fixtures], and to get two wins so far against the Irish teams has been great, so we’re happy with that,” said Horne, who missed out to uncapped duo Ben White of London Irish and Ben Vellacott of Edinburgh, as well as Price, when Townsend named his training squad at the end of January.
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“It’s obviously been great to get a good few minutes under my belt, and I’ve been pretty happy with how it’s gone. The team is playing well, and I’ve tried to bring what I’m good at which is speeding the game up to get the attack going. I’ve really enjoyed it.
“You want to be playing for Scotland and to be in every squad, but you’ve got to get over that disappointment,” he added. “The positive thing was that it gave me the chance to get some minutes here at Glasgow which is what I need at the moment.”
“The door is always open [for a mid-Six Nations recall] and it’s happened before – but you try not to think about that,” he added. “All you can do is pitch up for your club and put in the best performance possible.
“If a call-up comes then great, but, at the moment, it’s just about winning as many games as we can for Glasgow.”
Warriors host Benetton this coming Saturday evening, and Horne insisted that neither he nor his team will underestimate their Italian opponents, who currently sit eighth in the URC table but who have beaten Warriors (at home) the last two times the teams have met.
“We’re under no illusions about the challenge we face,” he said. “They won the Rainbow Cup last year, so they are a team you need to play your best rugby against to get a result. We want to keep our recent momentum going.
“There are a lot of improvements we can still make to our game,” he added. “We review games and know we can be better. We’re prone to having an off day and you can’t afford that when you’re vying to try to make the play-offs and win championships.
“We’re sitting third now in the URC with the top five teams separated by a point or so, so every weekend is massive.”
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George Horne is a good example of why we need a third Pro side . While Price is on international duty , he has to compete for game time with Jamie Dobie , a really promising scrum half ,and Sean Kennedy in the squad. Edinburgh has the same issue with Pyrgos , Vellacott ,Shiel, Gelderbloom all competing for Pro rugby game time
Then outside of this there are guys like Kaleem Barreto not getting Pro rugby XVs experience .
The SRU needs to focus on getting a third Pro side where many of the “ surplus” Edinburgh and Glasgow players and others like Barretto can get weekly Pro rugby experience
It is time to consider setting up a lower cost Connacht type team.
I could never really understand what went wrong with the SRU association with London Scottish that seemed to go nowhere, I am sure there must be someone who knows what went wrong.
They are in an extremely competitive league or were as they are languishing at the bottom at the moment and surely it would have been a better option to lend some SQ players to them, rather than or as well as the Super 6 but as I said its a bit late now.
Everybody hits a bit of ‘iffy’ form I am sure he will get back to the level he has enjoyed I think he is too good a player to be out of favour for long.