Fagerson on a revenge quest
Warriors want Montpellier scalp
THEIr Champions Cup hopes have been extinguished already but Glasgow Warriors travel to France for the return match with Montpellier tomorrow hoping to restore their reputation as a team of substance in continental competition.
For many, it is also a chance to get one over on the coach who capped them and did more than any other to drag the Scotland national team into relevancy.
Many of them have good reason to be grateful to Vern Cotter, who ended his spell as Scotland coach in the summer and is now in charge at the Altrad Stadium, but professional pride dictates that they will endeavour to cause him as much trouble as possible in his current role.
There are also a few one-to-one battles to be resolved — none more close-up and personal than the ones in the front row where there is a palpable feeling of frustration that the Glasgow players managed to dominate their opponents in the home leg, but still ended up on the losing side. It is not often that the dominant scrum comes out second in the overall battle.
There are bound to be changes. Hooker George Turner has been banned for his shoulder charge on Louis Picamoles and that will leave Glasgow scrambling to fill the front-row positions, with both Fraser brown and Pat MacArthur struggling with injuries.
That puts a huge amount of pressure on Zander Fagerson, the tighthead. At only 21, he may be the baby of the front row in age terms, but when it comes to experience, he is the one with a near monopoly.
Assuming he is partnering Jamie bhatti and James Malcolm, Fagerson has 30 starts to his name, while the other two only have 13 between them even though they are older by three and two years respectively.
Not that Fagerson is going to put pressure on his colleague Turner. ‘He knows what he has done, he knows it was not great, so I am going to put my arm round him and tell him it’s going to be okay,’ said Fagerson.
‘It is not going to be difficult at all to get up for the game. Champions Cup rugby — there is always a buzz around the place even when you go and get stuffed. I am really looking forward to going to right wrongs and getting a win this weekend. We are not here to lie down.
‘It has been a tough start, we are out of it — lets not beat about the bush — but we have ambitions and want to put in a good performance. I am looking forward to it.
‘After the first two games, we knew we needed to win the rest to go through and did not do that last week.
‘We played well in glimpses but did not have the 80-minute performance and they are a good outfit with lots of world-class players.
‘Every time you wear a Glasgow shirt, though, you aim to win and it is the same this weekend. We still have ambitions and can end the season well. We want to show up well in the last few games.’
After winning three scrum penalties and getting the mighty Montpellier set-piece under pressure on a few more occasions, Fagerson also has a fair amount of frustration to take out on the French.
‘I was pretty happy, scrum time was good,’ he said. ‘The maul try was not ideal but we will go out there to right the wrongs.
‘We know what they are going to do. They are a big physical team who will go at us in those areas again — I am looking forward to the challenge.’
beyond that, there is also the lure of winning spots in the Glasgow teams to play Edinburgh twice over the festive period, the games that really get the players and fans excited as history and form become irrelevant in a battle of personal rivalries.
‘It doesn’t matter if you have been here for a month or ten years, these are still games you want to play in,’ said Fagerson. ‘When they are coming up, there is a definite edge in training.’