Glasgow Euro dreams are blown away by fired-up French
Glasgow are facing their very own Brexit after their Euro dream was blown off course at stormy Scotstoun.
Dave Rennie’s men went into this Champions Cup clash on a high after their win in France last weekend.
But after dominating the opening stages they had little answer to the power and pace of La Rochelle and now need a miraculous sequence of results to reach the knockout stages. Warriors got off to a flier. From the l i ne o u t f rom Adam Hastings’ bri l l iant touch f inder, hooker Fraser Brown
Glasgow Warriors..7 La Rochelle .......... 12
David Kelso
was driven over by his packmates. And Hastings defied the swirling breeze to add the extras.
Fired- up La Rochelle stunned the Scots when winger Jules Favre won the race to a chip and scored in the corner.
Wind-assisted Glasgow were struggling with the elements and Levani Botia looked certain to score but let the greasy ball slip from his grasp just a stride from the line.
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“We nce didn ’t defe We ts didn win. to poin n .” whe e early com , hur t l ing over under the crossbar to give Brock James an easy conversion.
Glasgow bounced back to life in the closing stages of the half but they did not look likely to turn possession into points.
That pattern continued after the restart and coach Rennie began to deploy his subs in an effort to turn the tide.
One of them, Nick Grigg, almost did that only to be blocked inches short, having somehow broken through three challenges.
Warriors remained camped in the 22 and they were unlucky not to be awarded a penalty try when the visiting half-back illegally kicked the ball out of the scrum in the shadow of his own posts. La Rochelle survived that and the rest of the barrage as they held firm when it mattered most to secure their first victory of the campaign.
To compound Glasgow’s misery, a last- gasp Scott Cummings ef fort was chalked off for Matt Fagerson’s dangerous hand- of f seconds earlier, which earned him a red card.
Def iant Rennie refuses to accept his side are out of Europe although he admits they have a mountain to climb if they are to reach the knockout stages.
He said: “It’s not terminal. Mathematically we can still do it. However, it will be hugely tough.
“To have any chance we will have to beat Exeter and Sale with bonus points and hope other results go our way.
“The way that we lost was very frustrating because we wasted a massive number of opportunities in the second half. We had all the ball and all the territory after the interval and we need to put teams away in s i t u a t ion s
like these.”