Rugby: Injury forces John Welsh to fly home

Jon Welsh is out of the remaining two matches of Scotland’s tour of the South Pacific through injury and will be replaced by his Glasgow club-mate Moray Low, who flew out last night to join his team-mates in Australia, before they head to Fiji.

Popular prop Welsh, 25, made his international debut in Rome at the expense of the injured Allan Jacobsen, but he saw the flip side of the fates on Thursday when he suffered a partial dislocation of his shoulder during training in Sydney.

“Jon has had problems with his shoulder and during a relatively innocuous tackle technique exercise he sustained a shoulder subluxation, where the shoulder partially dislocated from the joint,” said Scotland team doctor James Robson in a communiqué from the SRU.

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“We were able to put it back in but I believed it was appropriate care for Jon to be scanned and the scan showed that the shoulder had sustained damage incompatible with the demands of international rugby and sadly he will take no further part in the tour. He will be reassessed on return home with a view to possible surgery.”

Welsh’s stroke of bad fortune opens the door for his Glasgow team-mate Low, 27, who won the last of his 15 caps in the EMC Test against Italy last year. Low has fought back from injury to be part of the Glasgow squad that reached the semi-final play-offs of the RaboDirect PRO12.

The injury to Welsh does leave the squad top-heavy with looseleads because Euan Murray, Geoff Cross and Low all prefer the No 3 shirt. Ryan Grant is the only specialist loosehead prop remaining with the squad and, while he made a mightily impressive debut against Australia, the scrum might struggle if he too limps out of the tour.

Elsewhere the other injuries continue to make progress although Ross Ford, Joe Ansbro, Sean Lamont and Stuart Hogg all missed Thursday’s training session, the latter thanks to tendonitis.