He’s a fan favourite … he loved it here
STUART BATHGATE
SOMETIMES at a press conference you ask a question far more in hope than expectation of an informative answer, knowing the interviewee can easily sidestep the issue.
When we spoke to Dave Rennie last Friday, for example, and asked him if Glasgow Warriors might be interested in signing the newly-sacked Leone Nakarawa, it would have been simple enough for the head coach to play a straight bat and say something about wishful thinking.
After all, the Fijian forward left Scotstoun for Racing 92 in 2016, the year before Rennie arrived, so it would have been perfectly understandable if the coach had said he had other priorities.
But, instead of pooh-poohing a possibility that has excited the imagination of Glasgow fans, he confirmed the club’s interest in the 31-year-old.
“He’s a fan favourite, he loved it here, the boys loved him, so if we can make it happen that would be brilliant,” Rennie said, before explaining that an approach would be made to the player and his representatives.
The French media duly reported that an approach had been made and, although Glasgow were yesterday adding nothing to Rennie’s Friday comments, at the time of writing there remains a distinct possibility that one of the Warriors’ most iconic players will be back in the jersey before long.
Which begs the question we always ask when someone returns to an old club: will it be as good second time around as it was the first?
You might think it would be hard for Nakarawa to top the impact he made in his initial spell as a Warrior, when he was named man of the match in their PRO12 Grand Final win over Munster in 2015.
But he is a more complete player now than he was then – unsurprisingly, given he was a novice professional when he joined Glasgow in 2013.
Might there be a question of commitment? There are people at Racing who think they know the answer to that one: in a press release on Friday saying they had ripped up his contract, the French club explained his two-week unauthorised absence after the World Cup was not his first breach of discipline.
“At Racing, the only star is the team,” it said, going on to accuse the Fijian of an individualistic attitude and a total lack of team spirit.
But Nakarawa never showed such an attitude with Glasgow. On the contrary: he mixed well with his team-mates, and always seemed down-to-earth and unassuming.
Yes, then coach Gregor Townsend knew you had to give him a bit of latitude on the park. You couldn’t expect him to run up the same tackle count as his fellow-lock Jonny Gray, for example – but nor could you expect Gray to show anything like the same creativity and adventure in the loose.
The two had complementary strengths, and the team as a whole benefited immensely from that.
They say “Never go back”, but returning to Scotstoun after spells in other parts of the UK doesn’t seem to have done Niko Matawalu and DTH van der Merwe any harm.
Having said that, there is surely a limit to the number of former players the Warriors might want to recruit – or indeed to the number of world-class locks they could credibly have on their books.
A report at the weekend suggested Richie Gray, Jonny’s older brother, was also at least a potential target for his old team when his Toulouse contract ends next summer. You would presume the two Grays and Nakarawa could not fit into the same squad, especially with a younger talent like Scott Cummings also playing an increasingly prominent part in proceedings.
In any case, players who return for a second spell at a club tend, by nature, to be far closer to the end than the beginning of their careers.
Recruit too many and you probably end up with an age imbalance in your squad.
So, lest we become too addled by nostalgia for the halcyon days of that 2014-15 season, let’s nip in the bud any suggestion that Rennie’s task before he leaves Glasgow for Australia will be to reassemble the entire squad from that glorious afternoon in Belfast when Munster were beaten 31-13.
If Nakarawa does come back, that will mean 11 of the 23 who were on duty that day are registered as Glasgow players still. And that is probably a decent balance, ensuring continuity but avoiding stagnation.
THEIR high-pressure win in France could be a turning point in the season for Glasgow Warriors but, to truly cash in on the good work they did on the Bay of Biscay, they need to beat the same opponents this week with a try bonus.
The weekend’s results, with Exeter Chiefs winning narrowly at Sale without that key fourth try, puts them six points ahead of Glasgow, who are second in the pool.
Though Exeter still have to visit Scotstoun, their points in the bag mean they could lose there and still top the pool, consigning Glasgow to a tricky away tie if they go through as one of the best second places.
To get those bonus points, they are going to have to harness the spirit and brutality they found in the final stages as the French side threw everything they could at the Scots but could not find a way though their dogged defence.
“We had to rely on things we have been training and go back to the basics of the game,” was the recipe for success from captain Callum Gibbins.
“Things like good defence and holding on to the ball
– I thought we did those really well. It probably could have gone either way at the end but we ground it out and that was the thing we were most happy with.
“We were pretty disappointed with how we started. They got quick points through pretty bad defence on our part but the way we took that pressure, absorbed it, then turned it into points is something you need in competitions like the European Cup and PRO14.
“We’re pretty happy with that and hopefully we can learn a few things from it to take into the future.
“It was a tough game, the ones you like winning.”
That tough edge – the tackle from Ali Price when Vincent Rattez seemed certain to score being a perfect example of the never-say-die spirit they brought to the game – is exactly what they need and Gibbins hopes they can find that spirit more regularly.