Warriors stay alive
Glasgow cling to semi-final hopes but win comes at a cost with Swinson set to serve suspension
GLASGOW got the win they needed to keep their PRO12 play-off hopes alive, and they got a bonus point in the end too, with Sean Lamont claiming the vital fourth try in the dying minutes of a pulsating contest.
But, with attention now turning to next week’s Champions Cup quarter-final at Saracens, victory came at a cost, with Tim Swinson being red-carded for a swinging arm.
Barring a successful appeal, the lock forward will now miss Sunday’s match, and although Jonny Gray is likely to return to partner Brian Alainu’uese, it will still be a big miss as the Warriors look to pull off a shock.
One consolation came in the fact that Swinson’s team-mates finished strongly to get that bonus point, but they are still 10 points off the top four with just a quartet of games remaining.
Even if they win all of them, they also need the two teams above them, Ulster and Scarlets, to slip up, but Gregor Townsend was encouraged by his team’s strong finish.
“When you’re down to 14 men and they’ve got a bit of momentum, it’s great to come out the other with the bonus point and with real character shown by the players at the end,” the Warriors’ head coach said, before suggesting that the referee’s decision to dismiss Swinson had been hasty and implying an appeal would be made.
“He made a very quick decision without looking at other angles. Swinging arms can be part of the game, and from what I saw, Tim looked like he was trying to punch the ball out.
“We were struggling to get any purchase on contesting on the ball post-tackle, so we were looking to get turnovers through our tackles rather than post-tackle. That’s what it looked like to me.”
Connacht were first off the mark, with Nii Adeolokun giving them a fifth-minute lead with an unconverted try. Having been on the attack almost since kick-off, the visitors eventually worked an overlap on the right, and the winger sprinted in after taking a pass from Tiernan O’Halloran.
Finn Russell soon chipped away at the deficit with a penalty, then the Warriors scored their first try through Corey Flynn. Stuart Hogg had done the hard work with a chip and chase, and after Lamont and Alainu’uese had taken it on, the hooker finished the move off, leaving Russell a simple conversion.
Connacht were soon back on the attack and Craig Ronaldson took them to within two points with a penalty. Then, with half an hour on the clock, captain John Muldoon restored their lead after Glasgow were stretched to breaking point by a series of swift offloads in midfield. Lock forward Andrew Browne got close to the line, and Muldoon was able to squeeze in at the left corner.
Russell was on target with another penalty to make it 13-15 at the break, and although Ronaldson increased the champions’ lead by three points in the early stages of the second half, Russell grabbed his team’s second try after 50 minutes.
Scrum-half Ali Price did a lot of the hard work by drawing in two men from the base of a ruck, and his offload gave the stand-off the space he needed to head for the posts.
Russell converted to put Glasgow back in front at 20-18, then from the restart the Warriors went straight back onto the attack, only to be halted by a high tackle from Jack Carty on Peter Horne.
As players from both sides piled into a melee, referee Ian Davies could well have sanctioned more than one man, but in the end he confined himself to sending Carty to the bin.
Glasgow opted for the scrum from the penalty, and Price cut back against the direction of play to dive over for his team’s third try, which Russell converted.
Connacht fought back strongly, and with quarter of an hour left Adeolokun squeezed in at the corner only for the touchdown to be ruled out for a foot in touch. Once that incident was reviewed, the referee red-carded Swinson, and Donaldson had no trouble with the resultant penalty.
The Warriors needed a strong finish, and they got it.
With seven minutes left, Connacht were pinned back while trying to break out of their own 22, and when they held onto the ball on the deck Horne calmly bisected the posts to put his team 30-21 ahead.
Glasgow claimed the restart, and two minutes later Lamont burst through a tackle in midfield and raced to the line for that fourth try. Horne was wide with the conversion, but the job had been done all the same, and with a greater margin of victory than looked likely for much of the match.