SARACENS TAUGHT TOWNSEND A LESSON

GLASGOW WARRIORS head coach Gregor Townsend has confessed he showed too much respect to Saracens ahead of last weekend’s Champions Cup quarter-final defeat at Allianz Park. And Townsend, who replaces Vern Cotter as Scotland boss this summer, insists he will never again make the mistake of talking up the opposition at the expense of his own team. In a frank admission ahead of tonight’s must-win Guinness Pro12 clash with Munster in Cork, Townsend claimed he should have concentrated more on how the Warriors were going to fare rather than worry about how the likes of Owen Farrell and Billy Vunipola could be stopped. ‘We focused more on Saracens than ourselves, and what we didn’t see was a true reflection of what we are capable of — and that’s down to me as head coach,’ he said. ‘As much as that defeat was really frustrating and disappointing, a lot of that was down to the preparation of the team. We didn’t get it right. ‘Maybe we didn’t back what we can do in attack and defence and we maybe looked at the things they might do against us. ‘It was a good lesson for us, a good lesson for me. Obviously, Saracens are an excellent team, but so are we and we should have done much better. ‘We prepare for teams every game — how we counter their strengths, expose their weaknesses — but we have to play our own game, and we didn’t do that. ‘We’ve focused a lot on ourselves this week ahead of the Munster game. Obviously, it’s an opposition we know well. They’ve beaten us three times already this season, so there is not that much we have to cover on them.’ Townsend has named as strong a line-up as possible for a match which Glasgow have to win to keep alive their slim chances of making the play-offs. Townsend also has one eye on Scotland’s summer tour. He added: ‘We want to spend time with the Scotland players so they know what we want to do in terms of attack, defence and our philosophy of playing the game.’