HENRY Pyrgos hopes that Glasgow Warriors will be able to break their trend of inconsistency in Europe tomorrow by winning what is sure to be an emotion-fuelled game against Munster in Limerick. The scrum-half, co-captain along with Jonny Gray, was one of the key performers in last week’s 42-13 win over Leicester Tigers, but knows the team will need a lot more than one outstanding game if they are to qualify for the Champions Cup knockout stages.
“We’ve had one good performance last week: we’ve got to back it up,” Pyrgos said. “Our first goal is to do that week on week and get through the group, and if we can get through the group then we can take it from there. But at the moment it’s Munster this weekend and that’s our main focus.”
While Glasgow have become regular qualifiers for the knockout stages of the PRO12, they have yet to reach the last eight of the Champions Cup. Rather than simply suggesting that his team were therefore somehow more consistent in the league than in the cup, Pyrgos pointed out that the overall higher standard in Europe means that mistakes are punished more severely.
“You’re playing the best 20 teams in Europe. In the league sometimes you make errors, you make poor decisions, you don’t get punished for them. In Europe you get punished every time.
“You give cheap penalties away; goal-kickers are going to kick them in Europe. They’re going to go to the corner, drive lineouts, score tries. Mistakes turn into seven points more often than not in Europe and that makes it difficult.
“You can have a bad start to the season and you can build on it and still make it into the top four [in the PRO12], whereas in Europe you lose one or two games and that’s you struggling.”
The death of Munster coach Anthony Foley means that tomorrow’s match will be played in very unusual circumstances, but Pyrgos explained that his squad has prepared in pretty much the same way that they did before the Tigers match. “It’s been a lot of work from guys who have been injured and coaches who have been preparing us, getting analysis done and trying to work out the small details.
“It’s one thing doing all that stuff, but you’ve got to make sure you go out and perform. In any rugby game, the basics of the game are the most important things and we’ve got to make sure we turn up in those areas and the other stuff will come hopefully.
“There’s always distractions in rugby. These aren’t the same as the usual distractions, but there’s always distractions. We’ve just got to make sure, which we will and we have done, to focus on our jobs.”
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