THIS ONE IS GOING TO HURT FOR A WHILE...
Scotland centre Jones admits Warriors players will need time to recover from humbling at the hands of Toulon in Euro final
GLASGOW WARRIORS centre Huw Jones still won’t be over the European Challenge Cup final defeat to Toulon when he joins up with the Scotland World Cup training squad in a fortnight.
Jones had hoped to go into camp at BT Murrayfield on a high but instead will still be coming to terms with the heavy 43-19 defeat in the biggest game in the history of the club.
‘I will have a few weeks off and will come back in with Scotland on June 5, but I don’t think any of us will be over this by then,’ he said. ‘It’s going to take a while.’
It was the manner of the loss that cut the Scotland international — one of the few Glasgow players to earn pass marks in what was a dismal team performance — to the quick. He described the display as ‘sloppy’ and the fact his side were architects of their own downfall made the loss harder for him to take than any other that he has suffered with the club.
‘You name it, we did it wrong today and that was really frustrating because in a final you have to be switched on,’ said the Glasgow centre. ‘You have to be perfect but instead we were pretty sloppy and you can’t do that against any team, in any game.
‘What is frustrating is that we could and should have given them a better game. It should have been tighter.
‘Those three tries at the beginning of the match we made really easy for them, while we were not good enough in attack and did not take our chances. We got into their half, into their 22, quite a few times and this season our conversion rate has been pretty good — but today it was not great.
‘We got back into the game in the second part of the second half but that was too late. In that period we played a little bit of good rugby but each time we got close or had a chance, we made a mistake — whether it was a bad pass, a drop ball, giving away a penalty.’
It’s easy to understand why Jones — and the Glasgow Warriors fans who travelled in their numbers to the final in Dublin — felt the team failed to do themselves justice on the big occasion. Head coach Franco Smith said he would be holding a post-mortem into why they were so poor.
‘I don’t think it was the occasion that got us,’ said Jones (pictured near right, with Sione Tuipulotu). ‘There was nothing wrong with our preparation.
‘We are not bad players. We have plenty of experience between us. It was just mistakes. Mistakes at this level are costly. If you are not getting things right, if you are coughing up the ball — in your half especially — a good team like Toulon is going to make you pay for that and we found that happened. ‘I just want to say, it was one of those days when it didn’t go right, but we were not as good as we could have been.’
This was a Glasgow side that had been so well drilled that they had never been caught cold early in matches since Smith took charge last summer. However, in Dublin they were like rabbits in headlights against Toulon.
Error after early error gifted the ball back to the French side and with players such as South African World Cup winner Cheslin Kolbe and ex-Italian captain Sergio Parisse, who scored one of the six Toulon tries, the Warriors were always going to be made to pay for their mistakes. By the time they were 21-0 down after just 25 minutes, the match was over. Warriors may have scored three tries but two of them — one of two from captain Kyle Steyn, the other from Sebastian Cancelliere — were scored within the last 11 minutes when the game was beyond them and Toulon had taken their foot off the gas. A team normally so clinical, they had no cutting edge when it mattered.
The writing was on the wall for Glasgow pretty much from the off.
They took far too long to settle and found themselves conceding three early tries. Two of them were avoidable and came after lost lineouts on their own ball. Fraser Brown had a nightmare at hooker and Johnny Matthews, when he came on, wasn’t much better.
It was puzzling that Smith picked both ahead of Scotland’s first-choice hooker George Turner, who was in Dublin but only as the 24th man.
With the line-out unravelling at a rate of knots, it was a major surprise Smith took 66 minutes to bring on Richie Gray, who has been the form second row for Glasgow this season. The South African prickled at the suggestion put to him afterwards that he had dallied too long before sending on the British and Irish Lion. ‘Everyone’s got an opinion on that,’ said Smith. ‘I could have picked 15 other guys and everyone would have been complaining. I made the decision with the information I had. The players we picked deserved the opportunity. It’s unfair to say we’ve picked the wrong team.’
If that was the right team in Smith’s eyes then they let him down badly. It was sad that his players kept their worst performance of the season to last when it really mattered.
We just made far too many mistakes. Bad passes, dropped balls, giving away penalties... you name it, we did it wrong