1872 CUP SPECIAL...
HE had more reason than anyone to be hurting on Saturday, having been literally kicked in the head at the start of a match in which his team were to be kicked in the teeth.
But Fraser Brown captured the spirit of the season in offering forgiveness to his assailant.
The blow suffered by the Warriors hooker had looked nasty and resulted in the sixth-minute red card that ought to have turned things his side’s way.
Instead, even with Simon Berghan’s departure not only reducing their numbers but forcing them to withdraw Scotland flanker Hamish Watson to accommodate replacement prop Matt Shields, Edinburgh embarrassed their visitors by coming back from 7-0 down and 17-6 behind in the game’s final quarter, to end Glasgow’s 10-match winning run in this season’s Guinness PRO14.
“It was just one of those things – I think it was an accident,” Brown said. “I spoke to Bergs afterwards, it was not malicious. It looks so innocuous, it is one of those ones that can catch you out. I think he has seen my back and has gone to put his foot on my back in good-natured fun and caught my head.”
The real frustration he felt was clearly in the failure to capitalise on what should have been a decisive advantage.
“Edinburgh played well and we did not play well, we did not stick to our shape, we did not stick to our structure,” said Brown. “It feels like we say this every time we come to Murrayfield to play Edinburgh, we just played really poorly. We spoke all week about keeping the ball, going through the phases, cutting down the mistakes.”
Brown acknowledged that it is part and parcel of Glasgow’s high octane style of play to do so, but that they have to work out how to apply their philosophy more intelligently.
“I think we turn over the ball more than any other team in the league at the moment. That is the nature of the kind of rugby we aim to play. But we have to realise when we have to hold on to the ball and make teams work harder,” Brown admitted.
“They were down to 14 men, had a tighthead prop who was going to have to play 76 minutes and has not played a lot of rugby at this level. There was a bit of naivety from us, we need to learn quickly.”
ON a personal level, the pain was exacerbated by the fact that, with Scotland’s most capped player Ross Ford sidelined, there had been particular interest in his match-up with Edinburgh captain for the day Stuart McInally, who wore the No.2 jersey throughout the autumn Test series and was one of Scotland’s best players during it.
Brown felt Glasgow’s basics had gone well, but that was perhaps the least to be expected in the circumstances.
“At scrum time they were down to seven and it was a bit of a mess, but we felt we had the edge,” Brown observed.
“The line-out went pretty well, we missed the lift for one ball and that was the only one we lost in the game. So, the setpiece functioned well but it is about what we did with the ball afterwards.”
The central message from Glasgow players was, however, that they cannot lose faith in the way they are trying to play, must remind themselves that their methods caused problems for a mighty Montpellier side in the European Champions Cup in the fortnight that preceded their trip to Murrayfield and simply seek to do things better on the day.
“We had a good training week – one of our sharpest team runs in the one before the game,” Brown said of the build-up.
“It is just about performing when we get here. Too many times we come here and get sucked into that kind of game, we just don’t play our game. Rarely did we get into five-plus phases and get into our shape.
“When we did, the ball was slow, they did a good job of slowing out ball down but we are a good enough team to generate quick ball and did not do that. We will have to look at ourselves.
“It will be a pretty hard review week across Christmas and will come down to just hard work [but] I don’t think we’ll do too much different in terms of preparation.
“We prepared really well, we knew what we wanted to go, just did not execute, did not play our game. We just have to manage the ball, control the ball, cut out those mistakes and beget to multi-phase. If we get to multi-phase we will open teams up, we have a brilliant backline but also some really powerful runners in the forwards with good skills. We need to get to multi phase to exploit spaces, get some offloads in and get some shoulders to run at.”