Glasgow Warriors 18
Edinburgh 29
(Warriors win 1872 Cup 43-41 on aggregate)
EDINBURGH brought a deeply disappointing season to an encouraging end on Saturday, while for Glasgow Warriors the position was the other way round: a season with some significant successes, above all in Europe, concluded with a low-key loss.
The 29-18 loss was not the way Gregor Townsend would have wanted to end his five years in charge at Scotstoun, and it was certainly not the way the Warriors players wanted to end the season either. One slight consolation was the fact that they still won the 1872 Cup on aggregate, thanks to their 25-12 victory in the first leg at Murrayfield on Boxing Day. But, at the end of a campaign which saw them fail to get into the PRO12 play-offs for the first time in six years, they had wanted, at the very least, to prove they were still dominant domestically.
Instead, an Edinburgh side that had lost nine consecutive matches before beating the Dragons eight days earlier put in a more solid defensive performance. True, they resorted to illegality at times, and at one point in the first half had both Ross Ford and Sam Hidalgo-Clyne in the sinbin.
But they prevented Glasgow from taking advantage of the extra men, and were also better at taking their chances when they came. Although both sides scored two tries, the Warriors had two scores chalked off, one when Lee Jones had a foot in touch just before touching down, the other when Tommy Seymour crossed the line but was held up.
And, while Finn Russell had an off day with the boot, missing one conversion and a penalty attempt, his old Glasgow colleague Duncan Weir was bang on target with his efforts at goal. The Edinburgh stand-off was responsible for 19 of his team’s 29 points with five penalties and two conversions, and, after Damien Hoyland scored the first try for the visitors, it was another ex-Glasgow man, full-back Glenn Bryce, who got the second that clinched the win for the team from the capital in the closing minutes.
The result was enough for Edinburgh to end up in ninth place in the table, well clear of the bottom three but also a long way adrift of the top-six finish they had targeted at the start of the season. Glasgow already knew, after losing narrowly in Leinster in their previous game, that they were going to finish sixth.
With players and staff moving on from Scotstoun it was an emotional afternoon in front of another capacity crowd, but Townsend insisted that had not been a factor in the outcome. “We talked before the game about times in the past when we haven’t played to our potential against Edinburgh because emotion has played a part,” he said. “We’ve gone away from what we trained for to try and win one-to-one battles. That wasn’t the case today.
“We were putting our game into place in the first half but we couldn’t get quick ball. We got eight or nine penalties in the first half, but we wanted quick ball to attack. We didn’t make the most of that.
“It would be worth watching some of the lineout drives again to see how they were stopped. We have to make sure that when we do have possession near the line we come away with tries.”
Townsend, who names his first squad as Scotland coach this afternoon, will still take a keen interest in the Warriors, of course. But he will now have to show just as much attention to the Edinburgh squad, and he said he had been encouraged by the efforts put in by both sets of players.
“What we saw today was real depth of player from both teams,” he said. “There were a lot of Scottish-qualified players in the Edinburgh team and we had 14 or 15 in our side. It’s great that you can get that commitment from players at this stage of the season to put their hands up for selection.”
Scorers: Glasgow: Tries: Gray, Hogg. Con: Russell. Pens: Russell 2.
Edinburgh: Tries: Hoyland, G Bryce. Cons: Weir 2. Pens: Weir 5.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here