GLASGOW Warriors’ realistic chances of getting into the PRO12 play-offs may have ended when they lost to Munster eight days ago, but they are still technically in with a shout of making the top four with just two full rounds of fixtures to play in the regular season.
It would still require an extremely improbable sequence of results for Gregor Townsend’s side to get into the play-offs for the sixth successive season, including victories in their remaining games against Leinster and Edinburgh as well as a number of other games going their way. But they did their part to keep the issue alive going into the penultimate weekend by beating Zebre 45-10 at Scotstoun on Friday, and defeats yesterday for both the Ospreys and Ulster mean there are not yet four teams who cannot be caught.
Ospreys, third in the table at kick-off, went down 35-17 to Cardiff Blues in the Welsh capital, and remain on 65 points. They have now been overtaken by the Scarlets, who won 21-16 at the Dragons. Fifth-placed Ulster, meanwhile, could do no better than pick up a losing bonus point in their 22-20 defeat by Munster, who are now sure of a play-off place.
The Warriors are on 57 points with those two games to play, meaning their maximum possible total is 67. Leinster and Munster already have more points, meaning only two more teams have to get beyond that tally to finally rule Glasgow out.
Scarlets are on 67, so could be caught only if Townsend’s team end up on a superior points differential. Ospreys (65 points) and Ulster (64) play next Saturday, and anything other than a draw would put one of them out of reach.
The fact they were already all but officially out of the play-offs made Friday night’s performance all the more commendable by the Warriors’ second string. They might easily have let their heads go down given there was so little to play for, but instead they easily took care of Zebre, running in seven tries in that 45-10 victory.
Nick Grigg opened the scoring, with the other tries coming from Peter Murchie, Rob Harley, Matt Fagerson, Sam Johnson and Matt Smith with two. Peter Horne added five conversions as the home team displayed a ruthless streak against their understrength opponents. He was replaced by younger brother George, who was off target with his attempts to convert his team’s final two tries.
“Sometimes you get a feeling before a game that the guys are all switched on and really up for it,” full-back Murchie said. “Obviously it was virtually impossible to make the play-offs, so we talked about how we can’t let things peter out. We’ve still got massive games - we’ve got three games and we want three wins. It was a good team performance.
“It’s really good for the future. There’s lots of strength in depth coming through. If you look at a depth chart at the club it’s pretty huge: there are three or four guys that can play [in each position]. Everything looks positive for the club.”
Leinster, the league leaders going into this round of games, went into last night’s late match at champions Connacht knowing that a win would take them through to the last four along with Munster.
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