“If they can link up with us again for the last week, then great, but I can’t see it if I’m honest.”<\/p>\n
Townsend is scheduled to name his team to face Wales on Thursday, with the squad currently training in Spain.<\/p>\n
“We’re fairly happy with the group we’ve got,” Horne said. “We’ve got cover there. I can’t see us adding anyone.”<\/p>\n
Matt Fagerson, who started in the opening loss in Italy, took over from Ritchie against England, with Max Williamson replacing Dempsey.<\/p>\n
Edinburgh winger Darcy Graham, who has scored four tries against Wales, also came off the bench at Murrayfield.<\/p>\n
Dobie’s absence could mean a return for at least one of Duhan van der Merwe or Blair Kinghorn, the big-name British and Irish Lions backs who were not in the matchday 23s for the opening two matches.<\/p>\n
Kinghorn is back with the Scotland squad after being released to play for Toulouse in Sunday’s 13-9 win over Stade Francais in France’s Top 14.<\/p>\n
“The competition’s been really high in that area,” Horne said. “The three guys went well against Italy and they went well again against England, but Blair is a really supremely talented player and played well for his club.”<\/p>\n
Scotland are aiming for a fourth successive victory over Wales, who have suffered big defeats to England and France in this year’s tournament.<\/p>\n
However, Horne is aware of the statistic that, of the seven times Scotland have had a Six Nations match after beating England, they have lost six of them.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want to be the same old Scotland,” he said. “They are all aware of the challenge.<\/p>\n
“Wales will be in a very similar position to us last week. They are a wounded team at the moment and will have that desperation that we had on show last week.”<\/p>\n
Wales now have former Scotland defence coach Steve Tandy in charge, with former Scotland forwards coach Danny Wilson as assistant.<\/p>\n
“We know how good a coach Steve is,” Horne added. “Danny as well is a brilliant coach and they will be desperate to beat us. <\/p>\n
“Steve is a very good defence coach and that is another motivating factor – we know how good our attack is going to have to be to break them down.<\/p>\n
“But we have just got to focus on ourselves and make sure we do a good job.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“If they can link up with us again for the last week, then great, but I can’t see…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-430648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}