Jackson slams Warriors for dropping the ball against Southern Kings
AFTER a performance that made a mockery of the pre-match talk of the benefits of team bonding, one of Glasgow Warriors’ senior players admitted that carelessness and an inability to recover from blunders had gifted South Africa’s Southern Kings a shock 38-31 PRO14 win.
Some pride was salvaged in the final quarter as four tries from Nick Grigg, DT van der Merwe (2) and Fraser Brown were registered to claim a losing bonus point, with replacement stand-off Adam Hastings converting them all, but it was a humbling day for previously unbeaten Glasgow and Ruaridh Jackson admitted as much.
“We were just far too loose, a lot of dropped balls and really slow to react to them. They were obviously fired up, physical and pounced on anything loose and severely punished us,” said the man who has once again stepped in at fullback for the injured Stuart Hogg.
The squad had spent the week in the holiday hot-spot of Cape Town ahead of the game before moving to Port Elizabeth for the match, and while coach Dave Rennie defended that decision, noting that they had taken a similar approach when they stayed in Johannesburg before beating the Cheetahs the previous week, Jackson pointed out that they had also started that match poorly but that they left themselves too much to do this time.
“We re-grouped fairly well last week, but for some reason couldn’t this week,” he said. “We were a bit further behind and the fact we hadn’t even scored a point come half-time was a bit of a shock.”
And Jackson denied that he and his colleagues had been complacent as the Kings raced into an unassailable lead.
“Certainly, from a personal point of view, there was no taking these guys lightly,” Jackson insisted. “We saw last week against the Cheetahs how punished we were in the first half and we spoke about it this week.”