UNINSPIRED AND GUTLESS
Townsend pained by Warriors’ showing
An emphatic European win over Leicester one week, with expectations soaring, then a 21-point drubbing the next against a Munster team that played for an hour with just 14 men.
no wonder Glasgow head coach Gregor Townsend was left scratching his head and tearing strips off his players after their defeat in Thomond Park.
It won’t end there. He will sit them down again early this morning before meetings with his assistant coaches to try to work out what went so badly wrong.
Townsend is not one to show his emotions but he couldn’t stop himself after the loss in Limerick, accusing his players of ‘failing to turn up’ for the European Champions Cup match.
Of course, it was a tricky occasion with the Munster players on a wave of emotion as they honoured head coach Anthony Foley, a close friend of Townsend’s, who died the previous weekend at the age of 42.
But that was still not an excuse for letting standards slip so badly over an eight-day period and especially in such a big game.
Too many experienced players appeared to freeze. In the 42-13 win over Leicester Tigers in their opening European Champions Cup fixture, stand-off Finn Russell was immense, putting over four penalties and two conversions in a top-class performance. Against Munster, he had one of his poorest games in a Glasgow shirt before being replaced on the hour mark.
Co-captain Henry Pyrgos, who scored a try against Leicester, was so out of touch, he was taken off eight minutes into the second half.
The pack that was so dominant against Leicester turned out to be the weak link against Munster. An embarrassed Gordon Reid lasted just 27 minutes before being replaced with the other two front row players Fraser Brown and Zander Fagerson off by the 50 minute mark.
no8 Josh Strauss, who was superb against the Tigers, had a nightmare against Munster and was substituted after just half an hour.
Townsend had talked passionately before kick-off about how he wanted his team to play their part in Munster’s day as they remembered their lost coach. He wanted them to be inspired but instead they were insipid.
‘It wasn’t us out there. It was a surprise to see nearly the same Glasgow team that started and beat Leicester last weekend perform that
way,’ said the Warriors head coach. ‘Obviously, this was not a normal rugby game after the tragic death of Axel but I did believe from what I had seen in training and hearing the players talking that we would put up a fight and play well. It didn’t happen.
‘We talked a lot about how we deal with the emotion of the occasion. Munster were excellent in their communication to us about what would happen during the day and we felt we would play a part in a special occasion. I thought this was a tremendous, inspiring occasion in memory of Axel. It is just a pity we didn’t really get involved in the game in his honour.’
What made the margin of defeat even harder to take for Townsend was that Munster winger Keith Earls was shown a red card after just 20 minutes for a tip-tackle on Brown.
Munster were 14-3 ahead by that point after two early tries but playing against 14 men should have given Glasgow a big advantage with an hour left on the clock. The exact opposite happened with the Irish outfit, roared on by the sell-out crowd of 26,000, raising their game even more.
They scored three more tries before Glasgow got two late scores through Mark Bennett and Pat MacArthur. An indication of the control Munster had came minutes from time when Rory Scannell got the fifth try for the 14 men.
In emotional scenes at the end, the Munster players gathered in the middle of the park in a big circle to sing the club song Stand Up and Fight, with Foley’s two boys Tony and Dan joining them.
By that time, the Glasgow players were back in the dressing room licking their wounds. Worryingly for Townsend and his coaching team, a man as experienced as centre Bennett had no idea what had gone wrong out on the pitch.
‘We warmed up well, trained really well this week, so I think as a team we were in a good place,’ said the Scotland international. ‘Why we didn’t perform well, who knows? Coming in at half-time, it was quite flat.
‘There will probably be more learning for us from this game than there has been in other games. We can look at where we went wrong and what we did to make it a bit easier for Munster, but we can also look at what Munster did so well to put us under so much pressure.
‘Just now, we’re all devastated by that defeat. On Monday, we can think rationally about the rugby, why it didn’t happen for us out there. It won’t be as emotional then so we can be analytical then.’
Meanwhile, qualification from the pool remains wide open after Leicester Tigers bounced back from last week’s defeat in Glasgow with a 27-17 victory at home to Racing 92 yesterday.