The problem for Douglas is Rory Darge's extraordinary consistency and durability. There's potential for movement at six and eight (Matt Fagerson, Jamie Ritchie, Gregor Brown, Josh Bayliss, Liam McConnell, Magnus Bradbury and Jack Dempsey, who's available for the Nations Championship). But seven is a bit of a closed shop.

As long as he's playing the way he can, Darge will be the starting seven, so Douglas, though hugely gifted, is scrapping for a bench place and the competition there is enormous. He's an out-and-out seven and that mitigates against him somewhat, albeit Gregor Townsend had him in the 23 against France.

If anything happened to Darge I don't think Townsend would have any issue about making Douglas his starting seven. He's close, but probably not as close as he would want to be.

As for Patterson, what a brilliant start to the season he's made. Such an exciting player.

I think he's got a lot of traffic to get through, though. Ben White, George Horne, Jamie Dobie would be the top three. I'm not ruling out Ali Price either. He's 33 but going well with Montpellier. Patterson's time will come.

Not sure I see too many others because there are outstanding players blocking their way just now.

Your point about bench cover is a big one. There is a very obvious logic in having Dobie on the bench covering two positions with Rowe starting as one wing and Steyn as the other. That leaves Graham out of the 23, which is a hard call.

I'm a fan of all of these guys but Rowe is such an impressive player and I'd want him in the mix.

It's critical that Edinburgh keep their URC form going this weekend. They can't slip back into old ways. They're playing a more aggressive and ambitious style of rugby and I want to see more of it.

It's not. A ton of work goes into making it look easy. These are smart rugby players who know exactly what they're doing after hours of repetition on the training ground.

The Glasgow maul has an aura about it now. Opponents must be scared by it and Glasgow have supreme confidence in it.