It's been a bad week for Glasgow with the press reporting that a number of players are not to be offered new contracts. One of the players, Barry Irving, learned of his redundancy when he read the story in The Scotsman and there are claims Kenny Sinclair found out second hand while representing his country in the World Series Sevens in Hong Kong. Glasgow captain Andy Nicol, who branded the manner of the revelation "appalling, if true". Scotland on Sunday also claims that Tommy Hayes and David Hilton will not be offered contracts for next season.
Chief Executive David Jordan has stressed that few decisions had been taken. "With the contracts of two-thirds of the squad up for renewal, there is obviously a lot of uncertainty and anxiety. But the truth is that our plans are still pretty fluid, because we dont yet have our budget confirmed by the SRU, and the number of players we retain will depend upon the success of our recruitment plans. We will talk frankly with any player who comes to see us, but the bottom line is that we will have significantly less money than we did two or three years ago. At this stage, we envisage keeping at least 50% of the [20] players who are out of contract, with some of the wastage coming naturally with guys like Andy Nicol retiring. We also see our squad coming down to 27-28 full-time players instead of the current 32."
Jordan said that Glasgow are looking for one or two big-name overseas players, but stressed that the need for most players to be Scottish-qualified made recruitment a difficult proposition in the present economic circumstances.
A number of players have been linked with a move to Hughenden including James McLaren, Andy Craig, Mattie Stewart and Ross Beattie.
Despite Scotland losing the Plate final 19-14 to Canada, Glasgow's Roland Reid has been in try scoring form in the World Series Sevens in Hong Kong. He scored three tries against Sri-Lanka in the pool stage, two against Chinese Taipei in the Plate quarter-final and one against the Cook Islands in the semi-final.