AS Glasgow Warriors prepare to relaunch their season while the World Cup players start to drift back into the starting team, they have been knocked by the revelation that two of the national squad have returned carrying injuries that will keep them out of action for the next few weeks.

Both Henry Pyrgos, the scrum half, and Fraser Brown, the hooker, were on the bench for the quarter final against Australia – Brown was originally named in the team but dropped down when Ross Ford won his citing appeal – but it now tranpires that Pyrgos was carrying a wrist injury that is going to rule him out for four months and Brown had exacerbated a foot problem that also required surgery and will sideline him for four weeks.

Add that Ryan Grant, the prop, came back with a hamstring problem picked up in the last week of training and it seems the team were suffering more than had been admitted and Glasgow's hoped-for bounce when the players all return, with their confidence bolstered by some encouraging performances on the world stage, will be less than expected.

To add to the problems for Gregor Townsend, the Glasgow Warriors head coach, while the Ospreys, who visit Scotstoun tomorrow, have restored all their Wales players after giving them a week's rest, Scotland have elected to give their core players two weeks off and the likes of Jonny Gray, Finn Russell and Mark Bennett are still not available to the club.

They are able to bring back five Test players, however, including a debut for Sila Puafisi, the Tonga prop, and a first start for Greg Peterson, the American who has already had a couple of runs from the bench. They are joined by Leone Nakarawa, the lock, back from playing every minute of every Fiji game, not only during the World Cup but also at the Pacific Nations Cup tournament that acted as a warm-up for his country.

From the Scotland squad, there is a surprise with Tommy Seymour coming back at full back after scoring in all four of the World Cup games he played in, but rather less of a shock that Peter Horne, the centre, and Gordon Reid, the prop, also return after mainly being confined to bench duties during Scotland's campaign. They join four who returned to action last week.

"There are some who played more rugby during the World Cup but they should all be back in time for the Champions Cup [in two weeks]," said Townsend. "Over the next two games, Ospreys and Cardiff, we should have everybody back available.

"As a group, we were not happy with some aspects of our performance in Leinster last week but there were other aspects we did well. We know we will have to play well for 80 minutes and we are going to have to work hard to reintegrate players coming back. They have not had any coaching time at all with Dan McFarland the forwards coach and have gone from May to November [with Scotland].

"Some things they will pick up easily – the way we want to play rugby – but it is a time for real hard work from both players and coaches to make sure we are in the right place to win games."

It is also time for some of the new players to get a taste of what the club is all about after their own taste of World Cup action. "It was incredible, an experience I will cherish for a long time," said Peterson, who played against Scotland in Leeds. "There was such a buzz, it was so exciting. Now, the body is battle-hardened so it was good to get the first [Glasgow] game out of the way and I hope there will be many more."