GLASGOW IS A FOOTBALL CITY. It is a sad fact of life for the city's Rugby Union community, that they will, seemingly for ever, be viewed as not quite right in the head, for following the handling rather than the kicking code of Football.
However, right now in this year of 2025, it is the city's premier Rugby Union side that is making waves, as was demonstrated on Saturday night, when Glasgow Warriors gave Les Galactiques of Stade Toulouse a 21 point start, before charging back in the second half to beat them in their Investec Champions Cup meeting at Scotstoun.
This victory just might be the finest in the club's history, it certainly places Warriors in the front line of European club Rugby and this win, beating a top-class, star-studded team contrasts vividly with the city's two top Football teams losing to mid-ranking opponents in their midweek matches, in the second tier of European club football.
The conditions on Saturday night were terrible, with Warriors being asked to play into a “20 point hurricane” for the opening 40 minutes, But, once they had been spoken to by Head Coach Franco Smith at the break, Warriors harnessed the elements brilliantly, upped their game and stormed back to win.
Smith really earned his corn at half time, calming down those elements in his side who were not reacting too well to yet another terrible demonstration of poor refereeing from England's Matthew Carley.
Carley is one of those officials who goes onto the park with his mind already made up a to which of the two sides is the superior one, and he proceeds to favour them all through. This nearly got to Glasgow, but, they ignored the poor officiating and in the end, they persevered.
Adam Hastings got the official call for Man of the Match; in truth, any one of the Glasgow team could have taken it, there were no failures, with some of the lesser lights standing up to be counted.
The problem for Warriors now is – they've laid down a marker for this season, this is the level of performance we expect them to maintain going forward. If they can do that, who knows what may be waiting for the club in 2026.
I FULLY SUPPORT the SRU's decision to, as far as humanly possible, go with Scottish players. However, the drawbacks to this were shown in Edinburgh's defeat to Castre on Sunday.
Sean Everitt left a good few first picks out of his starting XV in France, partly though injuries, but the SRU's rest protocols for members of the International Squad also came into play. This did not appear to be much of an issue in the first half, which ended with the French side leading by an unconverted try to nil, but, after the turn-round, Castre upped the ante and, hard though they tried, the Edinburgh side just could not cope.
Received wisdom has it that the French sides are different animals, home and away in Europe, and this game in many ways reinforced this point of view. We didn't really expect Edinburgh to win over there, so the fact they didn't is not too-much of a set-back. Put this one down to experience.
WARRIORS weren't the only side from the West facing a huge challenge on Saturday. Ayr's seemingly serene progress towards another Scottish club title faced its biggest challenge, with the visit to Malleny Park to face second-placed Currie Chieftains. This was where they suffered their only defeat last season and, having already had a fright from Currie in their early season meeting at Millbrae, this one was a real challenge for Grant Anderson and his squad.
There was also the small question of the Bill McLaren Shield being on the line in this game, so a real challenge for the Millbrae Men. When the half time whistle sounded, Currie were narrowly ahead, but, just as Warriors later that day would find their feet in the second half, so Ayr turned on the power to maintain their season-long perfect record of bonus point wins.
Ayr now have, with a mere six fixtures to play in the Arnold Clark Premiership, a 22 point lead at the top of the table. Unless there is an unprecedented collapse, it's now a case of when, not if, they secure the regular season title and first-place seeding in the end of season play-offs.
I DECIDED not to risk the day for the Buddies, by passing on the Celtic v St Mirren League Cup final – it proved a wise move, although I did switch over in time to see the final two goals. Not that I have anything against Celtic, but, my time on the Paisley Daily Express has left me with a soft spot for the town team.
I was watching the Toulon v Bath game, mainly because, Finn Russell is always worth watching. But, it wasn't his day and Toulon deservedly pulled away to win and banish their blues from last week's visit to Edinburgh.
No comments:
Post a Comment