Twenty years into his coaching career Dave Rennie underwent an uncomfortable new experience during Glasgow Warriors’ last match that the head coach seems far from ready to repeat.
In many ways the timing of a long pre-planned trip home to New Zealand for his son’s marriage could not have been worse since, for pretty much the first time since he took charge, Glasgow’s domination of their Pro14 Conference had just been challenged.
Runaway winners of it last season, they had once again built up a healthy advantage by the halfway stage this season, only to fritter that away as a result of a succession of back to back defeats to Edinburgh, then another loss to Treviso in Italy, allowing Munster to move past them into top spot.
Whereas Rennie could have been completely relaxed in leaving assistant coach Kenny Murray in charge had the big celebration taken place a year earlier, then, that Ospreys match last month had taken on a completely different complexion since the Welsh region was also within range of overhauling his side.
“I wouldn’t say I was a control freak, but it was the hardest game of footie I ever watched,” said the man who, more than 11,000 from Scotstoun, watched the match on a feed on the morning of the wedding.
“I’ve been coaching professionally since 1999 and never missed a game, so we watched it live, I sent a couple of messages and I was in constant contact with Kenny and the guys during the week, but they didn’t need me sort of biting in their ear.
“It was tough to watch obviously. It was 8.30 in the morning in New Zealand, 24 degrees outside and a beautiful morning with blue skies and it was obviously pretty tough conditions over here, so the boys did what they needed to do to get an important four points against a team that was snapping at our heels.”
Those losses were all against teams from Conference B, but Glasgow’s next few are against Conference A rivals, so doubly important.
However, the team management reckon that there are significant advantages to having to fight for the right to get into the Pro14 play-offs this time around, honing their competitiveness ahead of their appearance in the European Champions Cup quarter-finals for only the second time in the club’s history at the end of next month.
“Our side of the draw is very competitive. You go down to the Cheetahs who are technically in sixth place on 36 points and we are going to play each other a lot over the coming weeks, so I guess things are going to become a bit clearer over the next three or four weeks,” said Rennie.
“We realise the importance of it. We don’t think it is going to be a bad thing that we are going to have to scrape and fight and be at our best. I guess we felt that at this stage last year there wasn’t the same edge and the same desperation.”
He noted, too, that last season’s real issues had not been when they were relying on players who were seeking to catch the eye of coaches during the international window, but after the squad returned to full strength.
“We played really well during the Six Nations, it was more when we got our international boys back, so we’ll look very carefully at how we manage them back in. But, to be honest, we have been really impressed with how they have come back to us this year and quite often Gregor (Townsend, Scotland’s head coach) will release individuals during the campaign and those guys have always fronted up.”
As much as the prospect of having to compete on two fronts represents an additional challenge, then, not least with their injury list having been added to significantly in recent days with Scotland trio Stuart Hogg, Huw Jones and Ryan Wilson all facing lengthy lay-offs, Rennie reckons that the schedule looks more favourable this time around.
“We didn’t play well enough in that last part last season. It is always the little things, isn’t it?” he mused.
“We struggled to get continuity, there wasn’t a lot of games with big holes in the fixture list because we weren’t in Europe and we had already qualified in first place, so we think we’re in a better spot than we were this time last year. We’re still in Europe and we’re still in a position to make the play-offs over the next few weeks if we get it right. We are obviously missing a few guys, but we’ve got the depth and we’ve just got to get on with it.”
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