Harley insists Glasgow must improve discipline ahead of derby

GLASGOW Warriors stalwart Rob Harley says that his team know that they must be a lot more disciplined if they are to back up last weekend’s win over Edinburgh with another positive result when the two sides lock horns again tomorrow.

Despite coming out on top last Friday, Warriors conceded an astonishing 27 penalties (the average across the league during the PRO14 section of this season was just under 11 per game), had two players yellow-carded and Oli Kebble red-carded, with head coach Danny Wilson expressing his frustration afterwards about the team’s poor disciplinary record over the course of the season.

Harley was one of the yellow-carded players, for sneaking up the side of a maul, and accepts that as a senior member of the team he has a responsibility to set a better example.

“I thought at the time I was hard done by, but I’ve watched it back and the referee’s got it absolutely right and I was completely wrong,” he acknowledged. “It was emblematic in some ways of our discipline in the game where we gave them a lot of penalties and that discipline was pretty costly in terms of field position, so we need to massively improve that this week.

“We talk about being hard to beat and playing tough, and defensively we really did that last week. The defensive effort throughout the whole 80 minutes was incredible with guys working together in getting off the line. It was exactly what we wanted to show.

“But on the other hand, the discipline gave them a lot of access into the game, gave them field position, and gave them the opportunity to hurt us with the driving maul when they got it going. So, that’s something we’ve discussed and we’re looking to improve on.”