Blame me for blunder over Beattie omission, says Lineen
Published on 14 Jan 2011

The Herald reports
Kevin Ferrie

Sean Lineen, the Glasgow Warriors head coach, has accepted the blame for an administrative blunder which means Johnnie Beattie cannot play in the Heineken Cup over the next two weekends.

The Scotland No.8 made his first appearance of the season last Saturday after recovering from shoulder reconstruction and while he played 65 minutes of that meeting with Munster he has a long way to go to regain full match fitness.

Glasgow ran into a problem this week, though, when they established that they had already made the only permitted change to their squad for these matches by registering Dave McCall.

Beattie will now play for Ayr in their British & Irish Cup meeting with Birmingham & Solihull tomorrow and Lineen believes that it represents a decent alternative to facing London Wasps in Europe’s top competition. He made no attempt to deflect from the fact that a mistake had been made, though.

“We had a big injury list in the summer and a big time line for players coming back. John was scheduled to come back during the Six Nations but has returned earlier than planned and we should have allowed for that. It was an administrative error and I’ve got to take responsibility for that,” Lineen said.

“We only realised there was a problem earlier this week. We had already registered Dave McCall because he was fit again in mid-December and we needed cover in the backs. The person I feel sorry for is John, but he has been very professional about it and handled it really well.”

While Lineen and Glasgow will rightly be criticised, the reality is that this will not be particularly detrimental to either club or player.

Beattie had admitted ahead of last weekend’s comeback that the RBS 6 Nations was coming too soon for him after seven months out of action, while Glasgow have no chance of making progress in Europe this season.

Consequently, there could also be worse times for Max Evans to be ruled out for a weekend with a calf injury – it is not thought to represent any threat to his Six Nations’ prospects – and for DTH van der Merwe to return to his adopted homeland of Canada.

That is to undergo a compulsory citizenship test but European bureaucracy is giving Scottish rugby a much bigger problem since, as well as denying Beattie a chance of top-flight action this weekend, Heineken Cup rules are also effectively forcing Ross Ford, his international colleague, into action.

He would have been rested this week but Edinburgh’s management have had to include him in their starting line-up for tonight’s meeting with Northampton because he is their only fit hooker.

They had hoped to include Sean Crombie, formerly a member of their squad, as emergency cover this weekend, but they were told just before the deadline for submitting their team, that he had been ruled ineligible because he had spent time on loan at Newcastle Falcons earlier this season.

Kyle Traynor will now start the match at prop and provides the only cover at hooker, while prop Nicky Little has been called up from the academy to ensure that Edinburgh can list a full complement of three front-row forwards on their bench.

The irony is that Ford is one of the few Scotland contenders with little to gain from playing this weekend or next since he is a certainty to be in the starting line-up when the Six Nations starts in France.

Admittedly, Edinburgh’s haul of three bonus points, as well as a win in their last match against Castres, means that, unlike Glasgow, they can still cling to the hope of claiming the consolation prize of one of the three places in the Amlin Challenge Cup quarter-finals allocated to Heineken Cup pool runners-up.

It would take a freakish sequence of results for that to happen, not the least of which would involve them ending Northampton Saints’ 100% winning record – it is one of only two remaining in this season’s competition – with a four-try bonus point win in the English Midlands tonight.

The main incentive, though, is the opportunity for individuals to push their cases for national selection, as Scott MacLeod observed in looking realistically ahead to the match.

“We have to look at this as a chance to get to the Amlin Cup quarter-finals . . . [however] there are not too many more chances to make a mark before the Six Nations,” said the 30-year-old lock. “These are important games for everyone who has an opportunity of being involved.”

In his own case, all the more so after he unnecessarily reduced his own number of chances to impress by earning a red card in the first of the recent derby matches and missing the second as a result of the suspension incurred. That came immediately after a lengthy absence because of a rib injury suffered during the autumn Tests,

“I was gutted,” he said. “They had told me I would be doing well to get back for the derbies, but I felt I had come through it [the first game] all right, so to be sent off was a real low for me and to miss the next game was massive.”

MacLeod remains a major contender for a place in the Six Nations squad, though, as at least 10 of his Edinburgh team-mates are entitled to consider themselves ahead of these last two rounds in Europe.

This article was originally posted on 14-Jan-2011, 10:34 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 14-Jan-2011, 10:36.