Heat is on as Warriors fight to save season
FESTIVE DERBIES ARE NOW SO VITAL, ADMITS RENNIE
Ruaridh Jackson’s pink moustache was the only thing to brighten up yet another dark day for Glasgow Warriors.
The full-back, who has dyed his facial hair and is sporting a mullet as part of charity fundraiser Movember, claimed two tries and was one of the few Warriors who performed well in a dismal defeat at Scotstoun.
against a Leinster reserve side, dave rennie’s men were well beaten, with defeat leaving them down in fourth place in Conference a.
rennie, who is leaving Glasgow to take over as australia head coach at the end of the season, accepts the pressure is now on the Warriors to win the back-to-back festive derby fixtures against Edinburgh.
‘You need to get in to the top three, don’t you, to qualify for the knockout stage?’ said the Warriors head coach. ‘So where we are is not ideal but there is a lot of games left, so it maybe makes those 1872 Cup games probably a lot more desperate for us to win than it was last year.’
Based on their dreadful performance against Leinster on Saturday night, there is little to suggest Glasgow will take anything from the two derby matches, the first at home four days before Christmas and the other a week later on december 28 at BT Murrayfield.
What is worrying for Glasgow is that this was pretty close to their full-strength team against a secondstring irish outfit.
Jonny Gray played his first game since Scotland lost to Japan in the World Cup but lacked match sharpness. huw Jones has been linked with a move away from the club to the Stormers in South africa and the way he played suggested he would not be a huge miss.
To be fair to Jones, he was unlucky on just three minutes when it looked like he was going to get on the end of a grubber-kick from his centre partner Sam Johnson.
Just as he was going to try to pick the ball up, he was taken out by Leinster full-back hugo Keenan, who was given a yellow card. Glasgow fans shouted for a penalty try but Welsh referee Craig Evans ruled correctly there was no guarantee he would have touched the ball down.
‘it was pretty tough for huw as he got minimal opportunities with ball in hand,’ said rennie. ‘he did a couple of good things early on but it turned out to be one of those games. There was a lot of stuff around the edges and difficult conditions playing-wise.’
rennie’s decision to start Peter horne at fly-half didn’t work, with the Scotland international having a bad night with the boot. he missed one easy penalty and didn’t kick deep enough out of defence. it was a poor display not missed by the Warriors head coach.
‘Peter will be disappointed, especially with the penalty in front of the posts and i guess they nailed everything,’ he said. ‘Our guys were kicking at the right time but we just could not get it beyond their full-back, who kept bringing it back.’
The two tries from Jackson counted for nothing as the Warriors didn’t even manage to pick up a losing bonus point which left the veteran full-back frustrated.
Jackson is concerned that lack of consistency over a full 80 minutes is happening too often this season.
‘Frustration and disappointment are my only real emotions,’ he said. ‘We got off to a great start and could have put a couple more tries on them and then we just let them back into the game too easily. There were a couple of inaccuracies and we coughed up the ball at inopportune times.
‘i’m full of sympathy for Peter because i’ve been there.
‘Kicking is one of those necessary evils — you’re either the hero or the villain, and every kicker has an off night, so i felt for him a little bit with a couple of those kicks.
‘a few games have gone this way — we’ve got off to a really good start and then gone off the boil. it’s just a bit of a rollercoaster at the moment where we’re not getting that full 80-minute performance.
‘Looking over that footage when we come in on a Monday morning is becoming really frustrating because we’re not that far off but there is that inconsistency.
‘We’re on a rollercoaster rather than being steady as usual. We’ve given ourselves a harder task to make the play-offs than usual, but we’ll keep fighting to find that consistency and get ourselves up that ladder.’
and, on a lighter note, what about the pink moustache and mullet?
‘i’m always up for something daft in Movember to raise funds for charity,’ said Jackson. ‘i didn’t have as good a moustache as last year, so i thought i’d do something stupid with the hair. i had a Twitter poll and people wanted a mullet so i gave them a mullet.’