It was announced over the weekend that after grabbing his 100th appearance for Glasgow in their win over Racing92, Duncan Weir will play for Edinburgh from next season. Weir is on his way east to increase his game time and allow Phil Burleigh to slide back out to his more natural position of 12. It might also allow Weir to work alongside younger talents such as Blair Kinghorn and bring on their tactical kicking games, an area of core strength for Weir. It will be a wrench for Weir to have been usurped from his home pro team by (the even more gallus) Finn Russell, but having Scotland’s two current main candidates at 10 playing regularly is no bad thing, nor is allowing the queue behind Weir and Russell at Glasgow to loosen up a bit with perhaps more game time for Pete Horne there, and their own youngsters.
It was also announced that Edinburgh openside Hamish Watson and Glasgow prop Alex Allan have joined up with the Scotland pre-Six Nations training camp, perhaps to allow Watson time to get on board with the breakdown tactics that Vern Cotter, Matt Taylor and Richie Gray will be working on for the Six Nations and beyond. Total number of opensides in the Scotland squad, now: Barclay, Cowan, Fusaro, Hardie, Watson – and you could also add in Ashe, Strauss, Ford and McInally who’ve probably all stuck the shirt on at some point.
Alex Dunbar’s thigh strain is still being monitored from the weekend, but news was more positive from Mark Bennett who continues to make good progress. Tommy Seymour’s hamstring held up in an impressive performance that puts him right back into contention for one of Scotland’s fairly open wing spots.