A shining star would lift gloom at Glasgow
The stardust has gone from Glasgow Warriors and the purse strings have to be opened to bring it back. A once-entertaining team that boasted the likes of Finn Russell and Stuart hogg is now desperately short of the x-factor needed to thrill the Scotstoun crowd. The best days of crowd pleasers such as Niko Matawalu are behind them.
Granted, it was freezing when Glasgow hosted Leinster on Saturday night but the atmosphere was unusually flat from the start.
The Warriors fans have been loyal but the SRU — who control the purse strings at Glasgow Warriors and edinburgh — simply can’t be complacent and assume they will keep selling out Scotstoun if new faces aren’t brought in.
Of course, that won’t happen overnight, or possibly even during the current Pro14 campaign, but there has to be money put aside now to ensure Glasgow Warriors strengthen, at the very least, by the start of next season.
If the powerbrokers fail to act, the Warriors run the risk of becoming mid-table also-rans, which would be a shame considering how the club has grown.
There is no reason why Glasgow should not get a cash boost now to buy or earmark new players. After all, the SRU are about to pocket a £35million cash boost after a private equity firm bought a minority share in the Pro14. A decent chunk of that should be ring-fenced to bring in new players at both clubs.
hogg was paid £375,000-a-year at Glasgow — which was the highest paid to anyone in Scottish rugby — and the SRU need to invest again to bring in some star quality.
If Dave Rennie wasn’t leaving at the end of the season to join Australia, you would like to think he would have been banging down the door of SRU chief executive Mark Dodson telling him his team needs strengthening. You would hope Scotland assistant head coach Danny Wilson, who takes over from Rennie in the summer, will be of a similar mind.
Rennie has done well considering he lost two world-class players in Russell and hogg on his watch but is getting out at the perfect time. Getting Glasgow to a heineken Champions Cup quarter-final, where they lost to Saracens, and to a Pro14 play-off final, losing to Leinster, is a decent enough record at the club from him so far.
The New Zealander did it with less of a star-studded squad than either of his predecessors Gregor Townsend or Sean Lineen.
Russell was never replaced which left him no choice but to put his faith in fly-half Adam hastings, who is still not the finished product. his understudy at ten is Peter horne, who had a nightmare with the boot in a rare start at stand-off against Leinster.
The make-do-and-mend ethos has been taken a step further this season with Tommy Seymour moving from wing to fill the void left by hogg at full-back. Veteran Ruaridh Jackson, who scored two tries from that position in the defeat to Leinster, is his back-up.
Overall, Glasgow’s playing squad needs freshened up. hastings doesn’t have the flair of Russell but not many players do. Scrum-half Ali Price should be inspiring his team more. Rennie made a mistake by naming Ryan Wilson and Callum Gibbins co-captains, with neither really standing out this season.
DTh van der Merwe and Seymour have fantastic try-scoring records but both are the wrong side of 30 and maybe past their best.
Glasgow have won three of their first seven Pro14 outings. If that isn’t a warning that changes must be made, I don’t know what is.