Greig Laidlaw has been ruled out of Scotland’s autumn Test series as a result of another serious ankle injury.
Scotland’s most capped captain fractured his fibula after coming on as a replacement during his club Clermont Auvergne’s defeat of the Ospreys last weekend and will be out for the rest of this year according to the French club which announced yesterday: "The injury does not require surgery but the duration of his unavailability is estimated between ten and 12 weeks."
On a personal level it comes at a particularly inopportune time in the career of the 32-year-old who toured New Zealand with the British & Irish Lions last summer, but now has serious competition for the Scotland No.9 jersey.
Laidlaw has led Scotland in 32 of his 58 Tests, breaking the previous appearance record as captain of 25 that had been set by 1990 Grand Slam skipper David Sole, during the 2016 Six Nations Championship.
However he has not played for Scotland since suffering an ankle injury in last season’s Six Nations Championship meeting with France in Paris which ruled him out of the rest of the tournament before that Lions call up then saw him miss Scotland’s summer tour of Singapore, Australia and Fiji.
His absence has allowed 24-year-old Ali Price a run of starting appearances which has allowed the pacey youngster to demonstrate his capacity to bring an extra dimension to the team’s play.
Price’s Glasgow half-back partner Finn Russell has meanwhile been steadily improving his reliability as a goal-kicker, the combined effect of which was that Gregor Townsend, Scotland’s new head coach, had been facing a tricky decision about who to start on the return of the long-standing captain and goal-kicker.
An extra layer of complexity is that John Barclay, who took over the Scotland captaincy last season and steered the team through its first winning campaign in more than a decade as they beat Wales and Italy at home to add to the Murrayfield defeat of Ireland in the opening match of the tournament is also a major doubt for the autumn Test series.
It has emerged that the 31-year-old flanker, who also captained the team during that summer tour is seeing a leading neurologist this week to investigate why he has taken longer than expected to recover from the concussion suffered during the Scarlets recent win over Edinburgh in the Guinness Pro14 last month.
He has not played since that match and has apparently been suffering from on-going symptoms with Wayne Pivac, the Scarlets head coach, expressing concern about the seriousness of the problem.
Townsend’s options consequently look to be reducing in terms of the captaincy since there is a shortage of obvious contenders in terms of players with experience of wearing the armband.
Having taken over as Glasgow Warriors club captain at the start of this season and led them to five of the six wins that have seen them maintain an unbeaten record in Pro14 matches this season, Ryan Wilson would appear to be in a favourable position.
However the 28-year-old back-row forward was appointed to that role by new Glasgow head coach Dave Rennie, whereas the captain of the previous two seasons when Townsend was in charge at the Scotstoun-based club, was his team-mate Jonny Gray. The 23-year-old lock may consequently have timed his return to fitness well after recovering from wrist surgery in the summer.
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