Jamie Ritchie hit with major Scotland injury blow as Glasgow Warriors confirm fears

The former Edinburgh back-rower lasted just eight minutes of his Scotstoun debut before going off with what head coach Franco Smith expects to be a MCL [medial collateral ligament] injury.

The player was pictured in a knee harness at the end of the match and now looks unlikely to play any part in Scotland’s autumn Tests that start against New Zealand next weekend.

Smith said: “I think it’s an MCL injury. He's walking around with a brace but we hope that it’s not that serious. Obviously, it's bad luck for him.

“He's just come back from his injury and been such a good influence in the club at the moment. So I hope that it's not serious and he'll recover. It’s usually four to six weeks but it depends. It could be a strain. We don't know the seriousness of it.

“He will be ready when we need him most, in the European weeks and the derby that's coming up. I do not want to do the doctor's job here and don't want to make a diagnosis unnecessarily.

“So currently we're going to wait and on Monday we'll have a better idea. But the original thoughts are more or less there [four to six weeks]. But there's now four weeks without games for us, so that will take a big chunk of that.”

Glasgow left it late to maintain their unbeaten start to the season when Ollie Smith crossed to land their fourth try and eventually see off the Lions.

Warriors were without 11 of their Scotland internationals in the final match of the first block and Franco Smith was happy overall with what he saw from a callow squad.

He added: “I'm excited about the way that we played. Yes, there's a patch where the Lions played well and we made mistakes, which we tried to avoid. But overall, I'm really chuffed with the result. We ended up having some very, very good moments.”