We must beat Cardiff or face must-win tie at Saracens

SAYS DAVE RENNIE

HAVING to go to Saracens in the knowledge that you simply must win? Well, that’s just about mission impossible in the current landscape of European rugby. Winners of the Champions Cup in successive seasons in 2016 and 2017, the English side racked up an incredible 20-game unbeaten run during that period, which is a tournament record. Their form at the start of this campaign suggests that last season’s quarter-final exit may have been nothing more than just a blip. Dave Rennie and his Glasgow Warriors team are acutely aware of this as they travel to Wales to face Cardiff Blues tomorrow afternoon. Victory is pretty much a necessity after losing their opening match against Sarries at Scotstoun last week. If they were to follow that with another defeat against the Welsh side, they would not quite be out. But they would leave themselves requiring snookers to qualify from Pool Three. ‘We go to Sarries in the final game in January,’ said Rennie. ‘If you lose your first two games, then you’re obviously going to have to go down there and win to have any chance of qualifying. ‘That’s not ideal, so it’s really important that we take care of business against Cardiff to get things back on track. ‘The Scarlets actually qualified last year after losing their first two games, so it’s not impossible. But it’s tough. You’d need to go and win at Saracens and pick up some bonus points along the way. ‘But we won’t be thinking too much about these things. All our focus is in putting in a strong performance against Cardiff and winning the game.’ Glasgow beat Cardiff home and away in the Guinness Pro14 last season and remain in high spirits despite last weekend’s 13-3 defeat to Sarries. ‘We have a pretty good record against them,’ continued Rennie (below). ‘It’s always a real arm wrestle down there, so we know what to expect. ‘Certain things didn’t go our way last week, but we’re still confident that we can go and put on a good show. The atmosphere in the camp is still very positive.’ Rennie has made two changes to his team, with recent Scotland call-up Sam Johnson making his first appearance of the season after recovering from injury. He replaces Alex Dunbar at centre, who is recovering from a head knock, while Tommy Seymour takes the place of Ruaridh Jackson at full-back. ‘Tommy hasn’t played a great deal at full-back,’ said Rennie. ‘But we’re excited because he’ll offer us something a little bit different. ‘He’s lightning quick, similar to Stuart Hogg, so he will give us really good options to counter-attack because Cardiff usually kick a lot of ball. ‘Alex has been going through various protocols. We knew he probably wasn’t going to be ready, so we made a call early in the week to bring Sam back in.’ His team selection suggests that Rennie is going to be looking to attack Cardiff. Warriors will look to run the ball from deep and throw it wide whenever they can. ‘Yeah, I suppose you could say there might be a little more rugby played than in the Sarries game,’ added the Glasgow head coach. ‘But it’s strange because we actually did have some really good opportunities to score against Saracens last week. We just got penalised by certain decisions from the referee. ‘There’s no point moaning about that. It’s just about how you learn from that because every referee will interpret things in a different way. ‘We’ll look to play up-tempo if we possibly can. Cardiff are a team that we know well, so we want to go out there and play the game on our terms.’

GLASGOW: Seymour; Lee Jones, Huw Jones, Johnson, Van der Merwe; Hastings, Price; Kebble, Brown, Rae; Harley, Gray; Wilson, Gibbins, Fagerson. Replacements: Turner, Allan, Du Plessis, Cummings, Fusaro, George Horne, Peter Horne, Matawalu.