Harley warns against toothless aggression
Fa whole troop of monkeys off their backs, a first victory in the 1872 Challenge Cup for six years followed by back-to-back wins in the same season for the first time since the trophy was rebranded a decade and then, the “away” leg of that double having been achieved at Murrayfield – a first victory in Glasgow for 14 years at the end of last season.
Yet, as he anticipated tomorrow’s clash, one of the more combative, but also more experienced members of the home squad, gave no sign of having any inclination to avoid going toe to toe with their closest rivals.
“To a certain extent that is just the nature of the derby,” said Rob Harley, their 27-year-old flanker. “I don’t know if you can take the passion out of it, I don’t know if you could, I don’t think you’d want to. It is just a necessary part of it.”
Naturally he believes that he and his team-mates can channel their aggression more effectively than they have managed in the majority of recent derbies, not least last weekend’s defeat at the hands of an opposing side that played with only 14 men for all bar the first five minutes.
“It’s just directing it into the right areas and hopefully being the right side of aggressive and hopefully being accurate and deadly when you have the ball and not getting over-excited by it and making mistakes,” he observed.
If that comes across as a naïve, there was a real danger of Harley compounding that impression with a simplistic sounding analysis of the area that caused Glasgow considerable problems this season.
“A mauling game is more down to the number of lineouts you have, so that would purely be on how often the ball goes into touch,” he continued. “Edinburgh are obviously very good there but you are always going to have lineouts in a game and that is one of their main strengths.”