{"id":942832,"date":"2026-05-07T02:11:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T02:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942832\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T02:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T02:11:23","slug":"sione-tuipulotu-on-player-welfare-urc-history-goals-and-glasgows-talent-drain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942832\/","title":{"rendered":"Sione Tuipulotu on player welfare, URC history goals and Glasgow’s talent drain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuipulotu, though, is not one to moan, the Scotland captain preferring to see the workload as him just doing his job \u2013 Roy Keane<\/strong> would surely approve \u2013 especially with the prospect of a second URC title still dangling tantalisingly in front of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to say what impact that [fatigue] had on the games and stuff like that just because we\u2019ve been doing that every year,\u201d he said. \u201cI know we haven\u2019t done that in Europe, or maybe not with as much hope or expectation as this year, but I think it has been a big year, especially coming off a [British and Irish] Lions year as well.\u00a0Just the way the year has played out, there\u2019s been a lot of rugby but I suppose that\u2019s what I get paid to do \u2013 play a lot of rugby. I think the emotional rollercoaster of the Six Nations, probably subconsciously, has its effects but it does on everyone as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLeinster have a big cohort of boys there, they probably have a bigger squad, so they can manage boys a little bit differently. We\u2019re just in the situation we\u2019re in at the club at the moment with numbers and stuff like that but Franco\u2019s doing the best that he can to manage the players when he can. Probably the biggest thing with the Six Nations is not necessarily the boys that HAVEN\u2019T got hurt, it\u2019s the boys that HAVE got hurt during that Six Nations period that probably have hindered us a little bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know [if they need to look at player welfare in more detail] that\u2019s not my job to do. I want to keep putting up my hand for the club, that\u2019s my job, that\u2019s what I get paid to do. I\u2019m not short of any motivation and my body\u2019s in a good place so I\u2019m just looking to finish this season strong. No other team has won the URC twice so that\u2019s another motivation for us, and we\u2019ve just got six weeks now to build a couple more memories before the boys take off.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Tuipulotu signed his long-term contract tying him at Glasgow until 2028, he probably couldn\u2019t have envisioned the volume of talent drain out of the club in the subsequent summers. Losing players of the calibre of Jack Dempsey, Huw Jones, Adam Hastings, Sione Vailanu<\/strong> and others will surely weaken Warriors in the seasons ahead but Tuipulotu insists he has had no cause to speak to the club\u2019s hierarchy about their ambition moving forward. Instead, he insists he continues to place his trust in Smith to rebuild again as he points to this year\u2019s success on the back of a similar exodus last summer of players like Tom Jordan, Henco Venter <\/strong>and Sebastian Cancelliere<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t [spoken to management about the clubs\u2019 plans] as I just have to focus on myself. But you\u2019re right \u2013 \u00a0some of those big players like Demmo and Shug have played big roles in our success over the past couple of years. But ultimately they\u2019re probably getting to a stage in their career where they deserve to go out. And whether it\u2019s to earn more money, which is the obvious one, or get a new environment for their family, like probably Shug\u2026they all deserve those opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got short careers and my situation, when I re-signed, was probably a lot different to theirs. I was a different age, probably a different stage of my career, I was just becoming [Scotland] captain. So there are differences. I can\u2019t really relate to them but I\u2019m just really happy for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I still believe in Franco and his plan to see forward. I thought when we lost TJ, Seba and Henco that maybe we were going to struggle [this year]. And if anything we\u2019ve had a better season. We won all our European [pool] games and we\u2019re in a better position now on the ladder than we were last year. It hard to know what the future holds. All I can say is that\u2019s not up to me. I just trust Franco in these moments. He\u2019s been talking about just building in front of your own house, that\u2019s what he talks about. He says, \u2018don\u2019t worry about what\u2019s ahead, just build in front of your own house\u2019. That\u2019s going to be my focus for the next six weeks, just build what\u2019s in front of my house, and hopefully at the end of the season something nice is out in front of my house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sione is, of course, not the only Tuipulotu on the books at Glasgow. Little brother Tavi is yet to be spotted in a Warriors shirt after signing last summer then sustaining up a serious knee injury. But the hooker is finally on the way back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a really tough year for Tavi. I\u2019m so proud of him because he\u2019s stronger than I was mentally at his age. And I think just his experiences in life has probably done that for him. He\u2019s back in training now with us, had his first session last week, and he\u2019s training fully this week. So, I\u2019m really happy for him.\u00a0Same as Mosese. Mosese came back [for Edinburgh] and probably to his own standard felt like he started slowly. But that\u2019s what happens when you\u2019re out for a whole year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t relate to them with long injuries like that because I\u2019ve been quite blessed in my career. So that\u2019s why I look at the \u2018lots of rugby\u2019 as a bit of a perspective thing. They\u2019d love to have been playing lots of rugby. It\u2019s been a tough year for both of my brothers but hopefully it puts them in good stead for next season. And, who knows, things can happen quickly\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuipulotu, though, is not one to moan, the Scotland captain preferring to see the workload as him just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,85185,918,8979,4884,712,28616,16,15,14772],"class_list":["post-942832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-glasgow","tag-britain","tag-divi","tag-glasgow","tag-glasgow-warriors","tag-great-britain","tag-scotland","tag-sione-tuipulotu","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-urc"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116530871479427562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942832","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=942832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}