Need to Know: Edinburgh v Glasgow Warriors, PRO14 match preview 2020/21

KO 3.00 at BT Murrayfield
Saturday 2nd January 2021
Live on Premier Sports 1

• 26 of the 30 players in the starting lineups are Scottish qualified. Among that NSQ quartet, Pierre Schoeman will be eligible to play for Scotland within the next seven months.
• The Glasgow 23 have a combined 1,047 appearances for the club behind them – the lowest figure for this stat for any squad fielded by the Warriors in the last two seasons. The 14 players who are unavailable for this match have made more appearances (1,212) than the 23 who will be involved.
• During the professional era, Edinburgh and Glasgow have played each other on 55 occasions in competitive matches. The Warriors have 27 wins, Edinburgh 25 and there have been 3 draws.

Tale of the Tape:

BACKS
97   Tries   79
433   Appearances   413
26.6   Average age   28.4
6   Capped players   5

FORWARDS
892kg   Pack weight   906kg
754   Appearances   563
28.3   Average age   26.9
6   Capped players   6

SUBSTITUTES
379   Appearances   71
28.1   Average age   26.1
3   Capped players   2

Glasgow Greetings / Edinburgh Introductions:

Ross Thompson is in line for his Warriors’ debut on Saturday afternoon. The Ayrshire Bulls man could become the first Academy stand off to play for Glasgow since Duncan Weir in April 2010.

Ross will also be one of eight Glasgow players making their first ever appearances in an 1872 Cup match. The others are:

• Brandon Thomson
• Johnny Matthews
• George Thornton
• Enrique Pieretto *
• Lewis Bean
• TJ Ioane
• Jamie Dobie

* Enrique made his Warriors debut against Edinburgh in August 2020 but this was a non-1872 Cup fixture.

On the Edinburgh side, Andries Ferreira is the only player experiencing an intercity clash for the first time.

Warrior to Watch / Edinburgher to Eyeball:

With Stuart Hogg currently suffering with a hamstring injury and Sean Maitland still looking for games to cover the period of his ban there is just a hint of an opening for the number 15 jersey for Scotland’s opening Six Nations’ game against England in 5 weeks’ time.

The respective full backs on Saturday will both feel they have a valid claim if the full back role is up for grabs. Since June 2017, Blair Kinghorn is the only player other than Hogg and Maitland to tog out in the 15 shirt for the dark blues. 8 of his 19 Test starts have come in that position as he has shown his versatility when switching from his more usual berth (for the national side at least) on the wing.

Huw Jones’ credentials come from a shorter timescale and are based on his domestic form. He’s been one of the bright sparks for Glasgow in this campaign since making his first appearance at full back in the season opener against Connacht. Revelling in the space to attack available in the backfield, Huw is just outside the PRO14’s top tens for tries scored, clean breaks and metres run despite only being available to start half of the Warriors’ matches.

Glasgow against Edinburgh at Murrayfield during the PRO12/14 era:

• 4 wins
• 1 draw
• 8 losses
• 3 losing bonus points
• 21 points out of a possible 65 (32%)

Previous match-up:

Officials:

Referee: Sam Grove-White (SRU, 12th competition game)
AR1: Ben Blain (SRU)
AR2: Hollie Davidson (SRU)
TMO: Neil Paterson (SRU)

Mr Grove-White’s regular season record for 2019/20 in the PRO14:

Matches – 3 (all refs – 101)
Average penalty count – 15.0 per game (all refs – 19.1)
Home penalty percentage – 72% (all refs – 48%)
Average card count – 1.3 per game (all refs – 1.3)
Penalties per card – 15 (all refs – 15)

A Warriors’ first-timer in the shape of Mr Grove-White. The young whistler has already picked up Assistant Referee and TMO appointments at international level. Along with Ben Blain he will be looking to follow in the footsteps of Mike Adamson and Hollie Davidson and into the refereeing role for Tier 1 internationals as Scottish rugby tries to build a conveyor belt for officials –  something that has been sadly lacking for a number of years.