Afshar, in particular, has come in for some criticism for his performances in the three successive defeats but Carolan believes there are few scrum-halves who can perform at Horne\u2019s level. The attack coach said: \u201cBen has got a good few minutes under his belt now but comparing him to someone like George is comparing apples and oranges. George is a 10 out of 10 scrum half. He\u2019s flawless. The speed that he plays at, the speed he\u2019s able to get the ball away at\u2026.everyone else is going to struggle if they\u2019re being compared to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some ways, it\u2019s unfair to compare everyone else to him or that everyone else should be like him. Ben brings other qualities. He manages the game really well. He\u2019s got a strong kicking game, which has been challenged over the last few weeks in down in South Africa. You can\u2019t afford to kick loose and I thought he kicked really well. We\u2019re patient and tolerant with the young guys. You\u2019ve got to give them time to learn. Part of learning is making errors but we\u2019re with them. It\u2019s not that we\u2019re judging them on a lack of performance when they\u2019re doing their best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glasgow fans could be forgiven for looking at the number of new additions arriving at Edinburgh and feeling they\u2019re being short-changed, especially with six experienced figures about to go out the door. But Carolan insisted that continuing to bring through academy graduates is the only viable long-term strategy for the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve proven over the last number of years that we\u2019ve got to bring young guys through,\u201d he added. \u201cThat\u2019s a very strong part of the rugby programme. There are at least eight guys that have been promoted from our academy this year who\u2019ve had various levels of exposure. We\u2019re really excited about their development. Our focus is more about bringing as many of those guys through.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t brought in (signed) as many. There are some good guys leaving the building but that\u2019s the evolution of a rugby team too. We\u2019ve got to bring young guys through. We can\u2019t continue to recruit from the outside and take a shot on players who are outside. We\u2019ve got to back the player pathway. We\u2019ve got to back the players that are in the building and allow them to reach their potential in here as well. That\u2019s our job as coaches. It\u2019s to try and get the best out of those guys and see where it goes. If we feel then that we\u2019ve invested so much resource in them and it\u2019s not going to bear fruit with them, we\u2019ll look elsewhere then. But I think we\u2019ve got to look within these walls first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glasgow return to action on Friday night when Cardiff are the visitors for the penultimate game of the URC regular season. Carolan was coy on just when those on the injured list \u2013 including Horne, Dobie, Scott Cummings, Gregor Brown, Max Williamson, Alex Craig <\/strong>and Matt Fagerson<\/strong> \u2013 would return but hinted that a few weren\u2019t far away.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone\u2019s back training at various levels. It\u2019s probably a bit early to be able to nail our colours to the mast about what team is going to go out on Friday but everyone\u2019s back. Everyone\u2019s getting a little bit closer to return. We would love to have everyone available. I think when you get to the end of the season, it definitely helps to have momentum, which we hope to build over the next couple of games, but also a full deck. By the playoffs, we hope to have a good chunk of those guys back.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some cracking games over the next few weeks and the top of the table is going to shift around. There are some really interesting heads-to-heads like ourselves and Cardiff. You\u2019ve got Stormers and Ulster this weekend as well and that\u2019s flipped the following week. So, there\u2019s a lot to look forward to and a lot of rugby to be played.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Afshar, in particular, has come in for some criticism for his performances in the three successive defeats but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[261993,748,85185,63584,918,8979,4884,46089,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-937665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-ben-afshar","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-divi","11":"tag-george-horne","12":"tag-glasgow","13":"tag-glasgow-warriors","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-nigel-carolan","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116517773486581190","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}