THE superior strength in depth of the Glasgow Warriors squad should make the difference when they play Connacht in Saturday’s PRO12 semi-final, according to Ryan Wilson. The Scotland forward also believes that, in addition to having more players from which to choose, the defending champions have greater versatility than their Irish opponents.

It remains to be seen how many changes Gregor Townsend makes to his starting line-up from the team that began the 14-7 defeat in Galway 12 days ago, but whoever is involved will have to absorb the lessons of that result. While he prefers to view the forthcoming contest as a game in its own right rather than a rematch, Wilson is convinced that the team that learns most from the first encounter will emerge victorious this time round.

“I think it’s 56 players we’ve used this year, which is an incredible amount,” Wilson said. “It’s also competition for places - everyone’s pushing each other here.

“We can slot in where we think we may need someone bigger, or different styles of attack. I’m not sure what Connacht will be thinking, but we’ll do everything we can.

“We can play a number of different ways,” the flanker continued when asked if he thought his squad had more scope to alter their style of play than Connacht. “I think last Saturday we didn’t get to fire many shots at all.

“Their defence was outstanding: they kept coming up on us, putting pressure on us. I think that’s one thing that maybe took us back a bit: we were shocked by their defence; it was on top of us.

“That’s something we can look to manipulate. If you’ve got a team that are flying at you like that, there’s definitely places you can attack. We’ll look at things like that.

“We’re looking to go out and play the game that you’ve seen us play before, and play some good attacking rugby. But on top of that we’ve got to make sure that our defence is solid and we really pressure them - specially with the weather if it’s going to be windy and wet.

“Our defence wasn’t good enough over there. We didn’t have enough dominance in defence, and that’s something we really pride ourselves on.

“I think the team that will win is the team that has done the best learning. Last week we were in all week and we looked at everything - what we did right, what we did wrong, where we could be better. So we’ve done a hell of a lot of learning and we’re not wanting to play the way we played when we were out there last Saturday. I’ve heard that the weather is meant to be pretty much the same, but that’s good for us, because we can carry on putting the ball in their half and trying to keep them in there.”

The Warriors played well within themselves in the last match, but Wilson insisted there was nothing deliberate about that, with no thought having been given to keeping something up their sleeves for the semi. “We weren’t planning on holding anything back tactically. With the weather the ball got spilled quite a bit and there were a lot of scrums.

“I think you’ve got to refresh your mind a little bit and go at it as a semi-final, because that’s what it is. It’s a huge game. It’s one of the biggest games the club has ever been involved in. Semi-final you want to push into the final, and to win back-to-back titles would be an amazing achievement. So I think refresh our minds and make sure we attack it as it is, a semi-final.

“We were the first Scottish side to win a title, so why can’t we be the first side to win an away semi? I believe that we can do that with the team we’ve got, with everything we’ve got here. We’re happy to go over there and really push them. It’s something we know we can do.”

Meanwhile, Richie Vernon has signed a new one-year contract with Glasgow. The centre, who started in last year’s PRO12 final, is getting back to full fitness after a lengthy spell on the sidelines because of injury.

“We’ve had a bit of success and we’re a team moving in the right direction and trying to get better, so it’ll be great to be a part of that for another year,” the 28-year-old said yesterday. “It’s been a frustrating season for me with injury, but now my shoulder is feeling better I’ll be happy to get back and progress next season. One of my goals is to get back involved in the Scotland set-up, and I believe I have the best chance of doing that at Glasgow.”