Glasgow Warriors hooker George Turner banned for four weeks

With Fraser Brown recovering from a concussion and Pat MacArthur battling a hamstring problem, the Warriors have added 22-year-old academy and Glasgow Hawks hooker Grant Stewart to their squad for Saturday’s return trip to Montpellier.

Turner will miss this week, the two 1872 Cup games against his former club Edinburgh and a Guinness Pro14 match against Zebre before becoming available again for the last two European games of the season at Leinster and home to Exeter.

Glasgow coach Dave Rennie labelled Turner’s shoulder charge on Montpellier skipper Louis Picamoles “dumb” and said it contributed to the defeat which ended the Warriors’ European hopes.

Glasgow were leading 17-5 at the time but the 25-year-old’s sin-binning in the 27th minute of the game turned the game in the French side’s favour.

Turner was alleged to have broken Law 10.4 (f), which concerns “playing an opponent without the ball” and a three-man disciplinary committee in London imposed the four-week sanction.

After the game, Rennie said: “The first [sin-binning] was dumb. At 17-5 we had all the momentum, it was our lineout, our ball and 20 metres out, and that was telling, which is disappointing.”

After years of struggling to make the breakthrough at Edinburgh, Turner has seized the opportunity presented by his move to Scotstoun at the start of the season and won his first two Scotland caps in the recent autumn Test series off the bench against Samoa and New Zealand.

Earlier in the season, Turner was the victim of foul play when he had to leave the field following a dangerous tackle by Cardiff prop Taufa’ao Filise. Referee Nigel Owens gave the Blues forward a red card and he was subsequently banned for three weeks.