Festive cheers as Gunners shoot down the Warriors
EDINBURGH 18 GLASGOW 17
It was Chris-mas glee for the gutsy Gunners as they pulled off a remarkable smashand-grab act to wreck Glasgow’s Pro14 unbeaten record.
The Warriors had been on course to live up to their tag as hot favourites at Murrayfield after home star Simon Berghan was stupidly red-carded.
But despite playing 74 minutes with 14 men, the capital crackers snatched the glory against all the odds – thanks to Chris Dean.
The centre emerged as the hero, scuttling in for the clinching try a minute from time.
It was, by far, Glasgow’s poorest display of the league campaign – and they will set their sights on quickfire revenge at Scotstoun in next weekend’s return second leg of the 1872 Cup series.
However, Edinburgh will head west with a massive injection of confidence.
Glasgow had made a dream start in front of the record inter-city 24,000 crowd – creating a superb try after two minutes.
Winger Tommy Seymour surged into the line as first receiver and hurtled through a huge gap.
His pass to Huw Jones was perfectly delivered and he was left with a cruise to the line.
Pete Horne confidently slotted the conversion.
There was more drama almost immediately.
Berghan was shown a straight red for deliberately stamping on the head of Fraser Brown at the base of the ruck, right under the eyes of ref Frank Murphy.
It was a double-whammy on the Gunners as they had been handed an easy penalty chance a split-second earlier to repair some of the damage.
Boss Richard Cockerill was forced to sacrifice flanker Hamish Watson to enable front-row specialist Matt Shields to replace bad boy Berghan.
Man-in-the-middle Murphy was back in action on the 15-minute mark when a melee featuring half-a-dozen players erupted on the touchline.
Edinburgh spurned a pot at goal in favour of an attacking lineout, but it came to nothing.
But during the next raid they took the safe option with Sam Hidalgo-Clyne clawing back three points from close-range.
Despite their handicap, the home brigade were earning plenty of possession.
However, they were struggling to pierce the tight visiting defence.
And when new recruit Jaco van der Walt did find space, he let the ball slip from his grasp as he zoomed into the danger zone.
A botched line-out handed Glasgow fresh momentum in the build up to the interval.
Samuela Vunisa was driven over from a tap-penalty, but couldn’t ground the ball.
They kept up the pressure, but Gunners somehow held firm.
The scrappy exchanges continued after the restart.
Glasgow were lucky to survive a dreadful pass by Horne in the shadow of his posts.
But he made instant amends by clipping over a penalty at the other end – only to see Hidalgo-Clyne replying in identical style for Edinburgh.
That was the cue for the frustrated Warriors to make wholesale bench changes.
And they quickly bagged their second touchdown – lock Scott Cummings powering over at the end of a line out drive.
Sub Finn Russell added the extras to open up an 11-point leeway.
But Edinburgh were far from dead – and Nathan Fowles burrowed over on the hour-mark to set up a tense finale.
Van der Walt’s angled kick was bang-on. Then Warriors wing Lee Jones was a fingertip away from pouncing on a Russell lob as play began to open up.
And then came Dean’s moment of magic.