GLASGOW WARRIORS 33

LEINSTER 25

TWO games played, two games won, ten points in the bag. Glasgow Warriors could not have hoped for a better start to the new campaign, particularly as the games in question were against last season’s PRO12 finalists.

On the evidence of their heavy defeat by Gregor Townsend’s side on matchday one and their weekend loss, also at home, to the Ospreys, Connacht are not the force they were. But Leinster should be there or thereabouts at the end of the season, and came a lot closer to winning Saturday’s game than the final score might suggest.

Seven points ahead at half-time in the first match played on Scotstoun’s new artificial surface, the visitors stretched their lead to ten with the first score of the second half. The Warriors knew they had to respond quickly, and respond they did, with three converted tries to deny Leinster even a losing bonus point.

Tommy Seymour scored all three, one from an interception, another from a loose ball and the last from a Henry Pyrgos pass. He had already claimed the first try of the game, from a miss pass delivered by Sam Johnson, while Tim Swinson also touched down before the break.

Three other players have scored four tries in a game in the PRO12 - Mike Mullins for Munster and Lee Abdul and Jamie Robinson for the Blues - but this was a first for the Warriors. Seymour, who also scored twice against Connacht, is clearly in peak form, and if Glasgow’s overall team performance left something to be desired, they can nonetheless take considerable pleasure in their winning beginning to the campaign.

“This group relishes tough games.,” Seymour said when asked about the squad’s reaction when the fixture list was announced. “You’re going to have to play these teams twice at some point during the year.

“These fixtures come out, you go hard, you get the opportunity to go at the best teams straight away. And we got the two wins, which is great.

“We were pleased to get them first two up, because it’s a marker to set down, and a good chance to look at yourself and see where you are and what you’ve done pre-season. So I’m very happy to get the two wins, and the two bonus points is massive for us.”

The tough games keep on coming - the Blues are next up on Friday, and have also won their first two matches, at home to Edinburgh then away to Munster. “They’re a hugely talented squad, and we’re going down there next week and they’re going to want to put a marker down as well,” Seymour added. “So fingers crossed, we can use this as we used Connacht to get the momentum and get over the line again.”

It was cross words from Townsend and the coaching team rather than crossed fingers that produced a much-improved second-half showing against Leinster. The Warriors were 12-7 up with five minutes left of the first half, but then Leonardo Sarto was yellow-carded for an offence close to his own line, and the Irishmen were quick to exploit the numerical advantage.

First Josh van der Flier spotted a gap and broke through the middle to score, and then Zane Kirchner gathered a diagonal from Joe Carbery to touch down in the right corner. Carbery, who had earlier converted a Rob Kearney try, added two more points from the Van der Flier score, then was on target with that penalty after the break.

Then came Seymour’s purple patch: two tries in around three minutes, the first when he snatched a Carbery pass out of mid-air, the second when he found a way through a fractured defence from the Leinster ten-metre line. The visitors briefly got back to within a point, but the Warriors winger had the last word with his fourth score.

Still, while that second-half response was inspired, Glasgow are aware that on other occasions they will be punished more severely for those first-half defensive lapses.

“We weren’t making our tackles, we were being a little bit passive,” Seymour said. “So we said: ‘Let’s not kid ourselves, we’re playing Leinster, to stand a chance of winning this game we have to vastly improve our tackle count and defensive intensity’. So it was just about holding the ball, and defensively being a lot tighter and more aggressive, and hopefully we could start to turn the tide.

“There was nothing way out of left field,” he continued, when asked what had been said at half-time. “I think it was most about how we pride ourselves on our defence and being able to put other teams under pressure, and we simply weren’t doing that.”

Scorers: Glasgow: Tries: Seymour 4, Swinson. Cons: Pyrgos 4.

Leinster: Tries: R Kearney, Van der Flier, Kirchner. Cons: Carbery 2. Pens: Carbery 2.

Referee: J Lacey (Ireland). Attendance: 7251.