GLASGOW WARRIORS have lost two important members of their squad for the first few months of the 2021-22 season after winger Ratu Tagive and back-five forward Kiran McDonald both suffered freak injuries during Friday night’s pre-season match against Newcastle Falcons.
Tagive will require surgery on a fractured cheek suffered when he collided with Falcons full-back Mike Brown’s knee during the first half of his team’s narrow defeat at Scotstoun, while McDonald was replaced 10 minutes into the second half after sustaining a heavy low to his kidney.
“We’re talking a fair period of time, more than six weeks, but I’m not exactly sure where those guys are at because they’ve got to see their respective specialists,” explained Warriors assistant coach Pete Murchie.
“They are not good injuries – they are not short-term – which is a real shame because they both did well on Friday and were looking sharp.
“Certainly, for this first block of games, they are going to be out,” added Murchie, suggesting that neither player will be seen in action again before the break for the Autumn Test series.
“Ratu picked up the injury when he dived on a loose ball,” the former Warriors and Scotland full-back continued. “It was after Sean Kennedy had put the kick in and the Newcastle player got sinbinned for a late hit. Ratu dived for a brilliant pick-up but caught Mike Brown on the knee on the way down.
“It can happen at any time to anyone, it is one of those freak injuries you can’t stop, but it’s obviously had fairly major consequences.
“It’s his cheek but we won’t know the full picture, potentially, until he goes under the knife. It is a real shame.”
“Kiran’s is not that common as an injury, but he’s obviously taken a fair old whack there and it’s a nasty outcome. I would imagine it is difficult to put a timeframe on it. It will depend on healing and so on, and you definitely don’t want to rush those types of injury.”
Glasgow will play their second and final pre-season match away to Worcester Warriors on Friday night, and Murchie is hoping for another physical encounter to really test the side.
“We can’t control who the other team pick, but we would like them to put their strongest team out so we can have a really good crack at them – which is what both teams need before their first league game,” he said.
“It is good to have an away game. It is a challenge, and we can start trying to change the balance between focussing on performance and thinking about the result a little bit more.
“It will be good for us to take the learning from the Newcastle game into this second game.”
While explaining the logic behind Glasgow playing two preseason matches then having a week off before their first league game, Murchie insisted that the players will not have it easy during the fortnight leading up to their United Rugby Championship campaign opener away to Ulster on Friday 24th September.
“It’s been a slightly shorter pre-season than normal because last season ran and ran, and it is always a fine line between too many and too few games, but we feel it has allowed us to have some good preparation while mitigating the chance of injury you get from having a full, live hit-out [the week before the season starts],” he explained.
“Every team will approach it differently, but we’ll have this game against Worcester then we’ll have a good chunk of prep time going into that first league game, where we can really tee-up where we need to be without the live bullets flying that you get in a game.
“The way that we train, you get a lot of that internal competition anyway in a normal week with plenty of 15 v 15, so you can certainly scenario that up to create game situations.”
Glasgow were missing around a half-dozen players for the Falcons match due to being Covid close-contact and several more due to miscellaneous injuries.
Murchie said a number of those individuals will come back into the frame this weekend but was tight-lipped about who specifically that will be.
“We’ve got some guys coming back in, I wouldn’t want to say who they are because there is confidentiality in terms of Covid,” he said.
“There is also a group of guys who we plan not to play because they’ve had a lot of rugby or other guys in their position need an opportunity, and we don’t want to spread the minutes too thinly.”
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