George Horne may have moved ahead of Henry Pyrgos in the Scotland pecking order, but his respect for the former Glasgow Warriors clubmate who helped him in the early stages of his career remains clear as he anticipates a first competitive confrontation.
“He was a great player for the club. I looked up to Henry a lot,” said the 23-year-old. “He won a championship and played a lot of times for Scotland so he was someone I tried to pick his brain and learn as much as I could from. Having him here for a few years was great for our development and it’s great to see him doing so well at Edinburgh.”
As the youngest of the trio of scrum-halves battling it out at Scotstoun last year, Horne’s name was mentioned when Richard Cockerill, Edinburgh’s head coach, first started suggesting that he was looking for one of them to be released to his side after news emerged of their internationalist Sam Hidalgo-Clyne’s move to the Scarlets. By the time decisions were made, however, Horne had established himself as first choice.
“It all kind of came out that one of the three of us could potentially but there was never any chat between me and them,” he said.
By then it looked as if Ali Price, who had suffered a loss of form and criticism of his fitness levels after his time in the Scotland camp at the Six Nations, might be the player Glasgow deemed surplus to requirements. Instead it was Pyrgos who rather surprisingly made the move after eight years at Glasgow and Horne acknowledged that it will be strange to be pitted against someone who knows Glasgow so well, but has quickly become a vital cog in an Edinburgh side.
“It will be different playing against someone who was at the club last year… strange for him and us, but we’ll just look to try to put in a decent performance to get a win,” said Horne.
The outcome is that both teams have scrum-halves who suit their style of play, Pyrgos fitting in well to the more structured Edinburgh set-up, while Horne and Price enjoy more licence at Glasgow. That contrast may also favour the Glasgow pair when it comes to providing Scotland with options to complement current captain Greig Laidlaw who has the capacity to move to stand off when there is a need to change the way the team is playing. While Horne, like Laidlaw, has experience of playing stand off and is a highly capable goal-kicker, he is, however, currently concentrating on his basics.
“Greig is a world class kicker but is also an excellent decision maker. There are a lot of things he is good at that I can take for my game and work on myself (but) at the moment the focus is just to try and nail my scrum-half basics rather than try and do everything,” he said. “Scrum-half is my position. I can play other positions but that is only really in dire need if there is injuries. It’s not like I am trying to be a versatile player. I am just focusing on being a scrumhalf.”
• Horne has agreed a new two-year deal to stay at Glasgow
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here