Warriors can’t take Italians lightly
“Treviso have a strong scrum and line-out”
Captain Jonny Gray has warned against complacency ahead of a series of fixtures that will go a long way to deciding Glasgow’s Guinness pro12 play- off fate.
Buoyed by a run of five victories on the bounce, Glasgow’s next four matches include three against italian clubs rooted at the bottom of the table.
First up is treviso on Saturday before the Warriors remain in italy f or their clash with secondbottom Zebre. then comes a trip to Scarlets followed by Zebre again at home.
With their full complement of international players back, Gregor townsend’s side will be strong favourites to pick up maximum points, especially against the italians.
Yet Gray is taking nothing for granted, and only has to rewind to their match against treviso earlier this season for a salutory tale of warning.
Glasgow fielded a near fullstrength team at Scotstoun that night i n november, i ncluding Scotland players Gray, Stuart Hogg, Sean Lamont, Finn Russell and the centre partnership of alex Dunbar and Mark Bennett.
Yet they still struggled badly against a side who had lost all 12 of their previous pro12 fixtures.
an embarrassing reverse was on the cards as Glasgow trailed 6-3 at the interval, and only a l ate, converted try from adam ashe, and a penalty just before the final whistle from Duncan Weir saw them squeeze home 13-6.
‘the last treviso game was so close, and that was at home, and we just won by getting a try late in the game,’ said Gray.
‘From that match, you could see that treviso have a strong scrum and line-out and are very physical, and they ran us close.
‘they now have home advantage against us, which they will want to use. they have given other teams real problems on their own pitch and we have to be at our best to beat them over there.
‘Despite their league results, they do have quality in their team, and we came up against a lot of their players when Scotland played italy in the Six nations, so they have a lot of experience which can cause us problems. We can’t take anything for granted.’
Hard on the heels of that treviso encounter, Glasgow then play Zebre for the first time this season after the earlier encounter was postponed in December due to a waterlogged pitch.
‘We haven’t played against each other this season, so that will be a new challenge,’ said Gray, who played his 50th game for the Warriors in the win over Ulster last weekend.
‘For us to have a chance in any of these games, we have to start well, which we didn’t do against Ulster, and it was only late in the first half we started playing as well as we could. that was not good enough but we showed great character to come back and win the match.
‘We will still analyse why that poor start happened and try to fix it before we fly to italy.’ Head coach townsend has decided against returning to Glasgow after the treviso game and, instead, the squad will remain in italy to build-up to the Zebre encounter.
‘as Jonny Gray has mentioned, the last time we played treviso we struggled to get over the line,’ said townsend.
‘they are first up for us and we have to make sure we keep up our winning run.
‘after that, we can get some training sessions in across in italy for the match against Zebre.
‘then we have our final three fixtures against Scarlets, Zebre again, and Connacht, which is tough, so we are under no illusions how difficult a league run-in we have.’
townsend sees Gray as integral to his side’s hopes of making the end-of-season play-offs, adding: ‘Jonny will lead in his own way but he has the respect of the playing and coaching group by the way he conducts himself.
‘He is someone who seeks out information and relishes taking on challenges, and this is a big challenge for him.
‘He is in his first year as captain but has a major role at Scotland already and will do well. al Kellock became captain at a young age, and Jonny has learned a lot from him at the club, as well as learning a lot from his brother Richie.
‘He is doing a great job as captain and also has a lot of other leaders in the team he can turn to as the season draws to a close.’