Injured Hugo Southwell to miss Amlin cup final

The injury was revealed yesterday by Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, as he named a Southwell in his 40-man training squad for the tournament.

Robinson is unsure of the severity of the injury but confirmed that Southwell would not now be playing in the Amlin Challenge Cup final a week on Friday against Harlequins.

He said: "Hugo Southwell has picked up a knee injury. He is in the squad, but we will be monitoring how serious that is. I would say he is out (of the Amlin Final]."

Speaking from his home in Paris, Southwell was tight-lipped. "I have only just spoken to Andy about it, so I'm not prepared to talk publicly about it right now," he said.

Robinson has few injury worries at this stage, Graeme Morrison having returned to action for Glasgow last month and Chris Cusiter continuing his return in Australia with Sydney Districts. The coach insisted, however, that, had he not taken the controversial action of withdrawing John Barclay, Al Kellock and Richie Gray at Glasgow, and Ross Ford and Allan Jacobsen from Edinburgh's last run of games, he could have had serious issues. He pinpointed Ford and said the hooker could have been ruled out for a year due to "over-training syndrome".

"If we had kept playing Ross Ford for the next two or three matches he could have been out for a whole year," said the coach. "This is a new phenomenon that I didn't know a lot about, but I've spoken to other people about it and you have to be very careful not to over-train players.

"Ross was showing the signs of that - a raised heartbeat when you start training, fatigue with gentle exercise. All these decisions were made for scientific reasons.

"It's a great lesson for me and a great lesson for us all on how to manage players. People in other sports have said we were lucky because, potentially, he could have been out for a year."