AN encounter that was very much in keeping with European rugby’s recent form book offered Glasgow Warriors encouragement while providing their opponents’ new coaching team with insight into the scale of the task facing them in The Famous Grouse Pre-Season Challenge on Perth’s North Inch yesterday.
As leading lights of the superior Pro14 competition up against a club which could not get into the top half of an English Premiership which failed to provide so much as a European Champions Cup semi-finalist last season, the home team should now be seen as much the stronger when facing visitors from English rugby’s headquarters and they met such expectations in bringing up a half century of points while running in eight tries.
They did so in spite of lining up with far fewer of their likely best starting XV than began the game for Harlequins and Dave Rennie, Glasgow’s head coach, was entitled to declare himself largely satisfied with the new season’s first proper work-out.
“I think it highlighted that we have a lot of depth in this squad [when] we are missing 20 internationals today,” he said. “We worked really hard on our skill set and our ability to build pressure and build phases. It wasn’t perfect but there were a lot of good signs today.”
It would, of course, be ridiculous to get over-excited at this point, but Rennie put things in their proper context.
“Look, it was a pre-season game, both sides missing players but I’m really ripped with the way the guys stepped up. Set-piece in the second half and late in the first was really strong and we were able to build a bit of pressure of that. I thought the handling and a lot of the decision making was excellent.”
That had not been the case in the opening quarter as they began rather scratchily, twice falling behind in the error-ridden early stages to tries from Phil Swainson and Renaldo Bothma, but responding to level both times through Paddy Kelly and Rory Hughes before taking complete control either side of half time with a flurry of touchdowns from Matt Smith, Alex Allan and newcomer Nick Frisby.
The variety of how the scores were achieved was at least as impressive as the quantity, forward power establishing an ever more secure platform through scrums and mauls as the game went on, while the race to replace Finn Russell as the club’s first choice stand-off looks set to be hotly contested on this evidence.
Brandon Thomson started the game there and delivered the scoring pass for both his side’s first two tries while running things well before being replaced at the interval by one of this summer’s new Scotland caps Adam Hastings, whose delightful little cameo included a fine break from defence then neatly judged soccer-style crossfield pass which sat up perfectly for Niko Matawalu to run on to with just enough room to get away from his marker.
The Fijian’s second was then set up by Ruaridh Jackson who, now re-born as a full-back, but spending most of the last quarter back at stand-off after Hastings was deemed to have done enough, rolled back the years to his days as Glasgow’s free-spirited play-maker with a shimmy and a shake down the left wing before setting Matawalu free once more to bring up the half century.
Added satisfaction for the Glasgow coaches was meanwhile provided by defensive soundness as Harlequins were denied any further consolation following their solitary try of the second half which, in the 47th minute, was more down to an attacking misfire rather than any defensive failure when Marcus Smith was allowed to run in an interception score from 40 metres out.
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