In competitive terms Europe is over once again for Glasgow and the prospect of finishing bottom of their pool looms, but the task facing them in their return matches is to seek to maintain some respect among the Continent’s elite.
Deep frustration emanated from the camp after a third successive defeat on Friday evening, a first bonus point, by virtue of getting the final scoreline back to 29-22 against Montpellier, providing no consolation given an acute awareness that they had only had themselves to blame.
As one of their more experienced campaigners, Ruaridh Jackson feels he and his clubmates have, over time, earned some respect among their peers, but recognised that they cannot take that for granted.
“I definitely think we will still have that respect, certainly if we go and do something in the league this year. We’ll be back stronger next year in the competition, there’s no doubt about that,” he said.
“Teams are analysing us now and putting together game-plans that they think can disrupt us, the likes of Exeter are pretty expansive for a Premiership team but they kicked the leather off it and tried to out-muscle us. Montpellier put out their strongest team they could have, so they’ve got respect for us and we’ve got to keep that and that’s why it’s important we step up and get three wins from these remaining games.”
The notion that anything they do in the Pro14 is relevant to how the traditional leading contenders view them may be moot and a recovery in the second half of the European campaign would probably carry a bit more weight in that regard, but either way Jackson insisted that there will be no drop of intensity in the matches that remain, beginning with next weekend’s trip to Montpellier.
“We’re not going to just roll over and let teams beat us. That would be disrespectful to the competition,” he said. “We’ll want to go out there next week with a point to prove because we really feel we left one out there against them. I don’t know who will be picked but if it’s some of the younger guys, you’ve seen how well they have stepped up.
“We want to go out there, win and set a few points right. We were in control and we just let them get back into the game through our errors. They didn’t create too much but we let them get field position and they just muscled up and were pretty clinical. It’s a pretty brutal group but with our form in the league we had high expectations and definitely feel we’ve let ourselves down.”
The contrast between a 100 per cent winning record in the league so far this season and a 100 per cent losing record in Europe could not be more stark. As with the contrast between Celtic’s domestic domination and their ineffectiveness in football’s Champions League, it is impossible not to draw conclusions about the requirements of the different competitions.”
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