Glasgow Warriors head coach Dave Rennie has advised his Edinburgh counterpart that he should be communicating through official channels if he wants to recruit a Scottish international scrum-half for next season.

With Edinburgh’s only capped scrum-half Sam Hidalgo-Clyne having left to join Glasgow’s Pro14 semi-final opponents the Scarlets ahead of next season, just as he has been recalled to the Scotland squad for this summer’s tour of the Americas, there is a clear imbalance between the two domestic professional teams with former Scotland captain Henry Pyrgos, this year’s NatWest 6 Nations starter Ali Price and another of this summer’s tourist, George Horne, all in the west.

Richard Cockerill, Edinburgh’s head coach, has made it clear that he would like one of them to be sent along the M8, but asked about that yesterday Rennie said there would be some tough talking to be done before any of them are allowed to leave Scotstoun.

“He’d be better talking to us rather than the media. We haven’t heard anything,” he said. “They are all contracted, signed with us. The big thing is that they all want to be here.”

He did not, however, go so far as to rule out the possibility of one of the trio making the move, indicating that the players themselves, all of whom are in their 20s, may yet have a say if any of them calculate that they will struggle to get sufficient playing time.

“I’m sure that if some player wanted to move on to get opportunities, which has happened a lot between the two sides in the past, then it could be there, but there has been no talk about it,” said the Glasgow head coach.

It seems unlikely that there will be any discussion of that sort until Glasgow’s participation in the PRO14 knockout stage is out of the way. Rennie says he has a full range of options available to him with the three-week break since Glasgow lost their last league match of the season and with it the 1872 Challenge Cup to Edinburgh, having allowed players who missed that match to recover sufficiently.

“All these guys, Peter Horne, Sam Johnston, Jonny Gray never played so are back in contention,” he said. “We won’t be taking any risks with anyone but Jonny is good. He was the one with the most concern.”

While this is Rennie’s first season with the Warriors he has plenty of experience of big knockout occasions and, indeed, is looking to repeat what he did on the other side of the world when he steered the Waikato Chiefs to the Super Rugby title in his first season with them six years ago and he is emphasising the need for his players to relish the opportunity that presents itself this week.

“You have to be excited by it rather than fear the outcome,” he said.

“We have made sure we have had a lot of fun over the last few weeks. We have worked hard, and if we go in clear over what are their threats and our opportunities and just go and play and enjoy the occasion and let the scoreboard look after itself.”