SCOTLAND full back Sturt Hogg faces a test on his injured shoulder tomorrow to find out if he has a chance of featuring in his club’s European Champions Cup matches later this month, writes Craig Emerson.
Surgery on his shoulder during the summer forced him to miss the start of the season and at one stage it looked as though it might rule him out of Scotland’s November Tests. Now, there is a hope that he could be back this month, depending on what happens this week.
“Everything depends on the results,” he said. “It is a big day. Hopefully that will give me a definitive answer on when I’ll be back playing.
“Hopefully it’s not too far. It’s just a matter of wait and see. There’s nothing else I can say. I am feeling good. I had a strength test a couple of weeks ago and it gave me an area to work on so I have been working hard in the gym and I feel all right.
“I’m being careful on the basis I have never had a long-term injury before. Hopefully it is the last one. I am always sceptical about saying how it will work – I don’t know how these injuries work.”
With the fit members of the Glasgow squad away in South Africa, Hogg was delegated to be the club’s representative at the European Champions Cup launch in Dublin and made it clear that though Glasgow got a monkey off their collective back by reaching the quarter-finals for the first time last year, they are taking nothing for granted in this campaign.
With Exeter Chiefs, the English champions, Montpellier, who are leading the Top 14 in France under Vern Cotter, the former Scotland head coach and traditional rivals Leinster in their pool, nothing will come easily.
“Everyone who was involved in Europe last year got a feel for success by qualifying from the pool and going to the next level,” Hogg agreed.”The problem with thinking a hurdle has gone is that that all happened last year.
“We’ll do everything we can to get back to that place but we are only looking forward to the first challenge, against Exeter.”
If the tests tomorrow do clear him to play over the next fortnight, it would end a frustrating summer for the player who had to come home early from the British. & Irish Lions tour of New Zealand with a fractured cheekbone and then went straight into hospital to have the unrelated problem treated.
“It was a bit of wear and tear, a couple of incidents too,” he explained. “I picked up a head knock against England and managed somehow to pop my AC [shoulder] joint as well.”
Meanwhile, Jason Leonard has become the first player from the professional era to be appointed to the British and Irish Lions board.
Leonard, a three-time tourist in 1993, 1997 and 2001, has been chosen alongside new Rugby Football Union chief executive Steve Brown as Twickenham’s representatives on the 11-strong board.
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