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Adam Hastings to play for Glasgow despite fears aunt may have died
By Liam Heagney
New Glasgow signing Adam Hastings will debut for the Warriors on Saturday evening despite fears his aunt may have died. The soon-to-be 28-year-old has returned to Scotstoun after three years at Gloucester and head coach Franco Smith has confirmed that the No10 will feature in the pre-season fixture versus Connacht two weeks before they open their URC title defence away to Ulster on September 21.
Hastings aunt Jenny, the wife of former Scotland midfielder Scott, has been missing since last Tuesday evening after going wild swimming at Wardie Bay in Edinburgh. As extensive search has been conducted for the 60-year-old who has battled depression.
Scottish media have reported that Smith has spoken with Hastings to check whether he was still prepared to play for Glasgow on Saturday despite his family situation. “I’m a person for people because that is obviously the thing that comes first,” explained the head coach.
“We would have not played him or involved him if it wasn't through his voluntary commitment. We obviously had a discussion and he is 100 percent fine to play. He acknowledges that it is a difficult period but that it shouldn't influence what he needs to do on the weekend, so we are appreciative of that.”
Having only taken over the Warriors in 2022 the year after Hastings exited for Gloucester, this current pre-season is the first time that Smith has worked with the out-half who first enlisted for duty at Scotstoun in 2017 after coming through the ranks at Bath.
“I have never worked with him before and I haven’t really followed his career so closely,” admitted Smith, who initially came to Europe in 2020 to work with the Italian national team. “I know of him having prepped against him maybe once or twice when he was much younger.
“I also advised him, as I advise everybody, that we will draw a line beyond what has happened. It's about what is going to happen. It’s not about what has happened previously in his career. There is no new pressure, no new expectation. It’s about him running out there and becoming the best rugby player he can be. I hope that he has completely reset his approach, that he has got rid of all previous injuries or fears of injury. I don’t want him to carry any burden into this.
“We just want to give him an opportunity to become better and he must contribute. That is what I advise my children who are also playing those types of roles: you play for the team. I hope he will play on Saturday with no expectations, just coming to contribute.”
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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