Wounded Racing ‘will throw everything at us’ warns Murray
The cliche that, when it comes to French teams, you never know which one will turn up, is not something that Glasgow are factoring into preparations for tomorrow evening’s titanic clash with Racing 92 at Scotstoun.
Assistant coach Kenny Murray said that the Warriors are expecting a ferocious onslaught from the off as the wounded French champions look to avenge last weekend’s remarkable 23-14 win by the Scots in Paris and make a last-ditch attempt to save their European season.
Having also lost at Leicester, last year’s Champions Cup runners-up know that another defeat would bring their campaign to a surprise and slightly embarrassing poolstage end and Murray expects them to come out firing. “Yeah, I’d imagine they’ll be up for it,” he said. “I think losing at home to a team, let’s face it, they were probably expected to beat. “Their record shows they don’t lose many games at home so I think they’ll be disappointed with their performance. Their fans, and I’m sure their owners, will have been disappointed as well so they’ll be coming here with a point to prove.
“We realise how difficult a game it’s going to be: physically they’re a good side, individually they’ve got some of the best players in the world playing for them, but again we’ve got some good players as well and I think they proved that on Saturday.”
Murray accepts that it is make-or-break for the opposition tomorrow, though a defeat could have a potentially ruinous effect on the Warriors’ chances of reaching the knockout stage too.
“I think they realise that one more loss for them will probably make it nigh on impossible for them to go through, they’ll be coming here to throw everything at us,” said Murray. “We fully expect that they’ll play pretty much the same team, they may even try to strengthen it if they feel they’ve got an opportunity to do that, but it’s gonna be a big game.”
While Glasgow will be trying to replicate as closely as possible how they played at Stade Yves Manoir, Murray said that they would also hope to add an extra edge.
“We’ve always got little things that we’ll look at,” he said. “[Head coach] Gregor [Townsend] is very astute in attack and there’s a couple of things we’ve looked at this week in terms of trying to find some space.”
The match in Paris was played on a rather heavy pitch and Glasgow might look to hit Racing with pace.
“It will be interesting,” said Murray. “It’s probably been on a lot of people’s minds, how they’ll adapt to the pitch here, the 3G pitch because they’ll not be that used to playing on those surfaces.
“We will be expecting to play a high-tempo game which we play here and take advantage of their inexperience of playing on this pitch. I’m sure they’ll come here with an action plan or a strategy to try and stop us playing and try to look at different things to do in attack that might frustrate us more than they did last week.”
Amidst all the coaching comings and goings at the end of the season, the future of former Ayr coach Murray at Scotstoun is one that still has to be resolved but he is hopeful he will be a part of Dave Rennie’s staff when the Kiwi takes over in the summer. He said: “Yeah, I met Dave and had a really positive conversation with him so again that’s something that’s still in discussion, but hopefully all positive.”
Glasgow, meanwhile, have launched a season ticket exchangetrialforeaststandseason ticket members who are unable to make tomorrow night’s sold-out match.
East Stand season ticket nembers who cannot attend the match are able to release their individual seats for sale to other supporters through the online ticket centre.
Supporters who have not yet been able to get tickets for the match can then go to the online ticket centre and purchase any available tickets as normal.