Glasgow won't stop believing

Senior Sports Writer

Sunday 9 September 2012

As they prepare for this week's visit to the defending champions, there will be no shortage of belief among Glasgow Warriors that they can emulate what they achieved last season by recovering from the poor start that has killed the excitement of the move to their new playing field at Scotstoun.

Ryan Grant takes a pass from Duncan Weir during Friday's defeat Photograph: PA

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Kevin Ferrie

Following Friday's 18-13 defeat by the Scarlets that, at least, is the message coming from one of those who was central to that revival in 2011/12 which proved a momentous campaign in all sorts of ways.

They recovered to reach the end-of-season play-offs for the second time in three years, yet still their coach and one of his assistants were sacked. Having been part of Scotland's World Cup training squad ahead of that campaign, Ryan Grant suddenly found himself in a senior role within the Warriors squad, while one of the club's youngsters, Rob Harley, was appointed captain, despite the pair just missing out on that trip to New Zealand. After losing their first two matches a year ago, Warriors turned things around in stunning fashion with the club's first win over Leinster, the European champions, and the role played by both Harley and Grant in the ensuing league campaign was rewarded with their first caps this summer.The echoes resound as, unusually starting today as they perform Sunday service at the behest of their struggling new head coach Gregor Townsend – who has lost all five matches since taking charge – they now prepare for a visit to the Ospreys, the defending champions.And Grant believes history can and will repeat itself. "Ospreys are always a good side, full of class internationals, but it's the same as any other game of rugby," he said. "There're no easy games in this league. We're going to go down there with the gameplan in place to win and we're going expecting to win, just like we were [on Friday]."We've been here before, we've had the rough start and we've come out the other end so there's no reason why we can't do it this time. This is game two and there's still a long way to go before the end of the season so I'm in no doubt that we can pick it up for the next game and start winning."The trouble is, of course, that this is a new regime, brought in to replace a popular and successful previous management team and, while pre-season matches mean nothing in their own right, there is a widespread view that they are important for re-establishing the winning habit.In those terms, then, Friday's outing was not game two but game five, with the Warriors having carried their pre-season form into their RaboDirect Pro12 campaign. But it is a view Grant dismisses. "Pre-season's nothing," he said. "The games that count are the league games. As far as I'm concerned we're nought from two. "Pre-season's a chance for boys to express themselves and make mistakes; it's a chance for the young boys to get a crack and show what they're worth, and it's a chance for us to get back together as a team after the tour and things like that. "It was a chance for perhaps boys that haven't trained together to get out on the pitch. I think we achieved that and we put in some good performances in pre-season. We were unlucky against Exeter, but that's in the past now and we have to move on."Grant talked, too, about the positives to be taken from the way they had played against the Scarlets and, of course, about how the defeat was the players' responsibility.Yet the sense of disquiet that replaced the excited buzz in Glasgow's new home by the end of Friday's match reflected fans' fears that a mistake has been made with the changes to the management team.Certainly what confronts them this week is now very different to what awaits rivals Edinburgh, who also lost their opening match but recovered superbly in now customary fashion by spoiling a big night for Cardiff Blues on Friday in what had been billed as an emotional homecoming to the Arms Park.Edinburgh's 21-19 win mirrored victories over Cardiff when the Blues were leaving the Arms Park in 2009, and when they played their first match at the Cardiff City Stadium the following season.Greig Laidlaw – their nerveless captain, who typically secured that two-point win with a last-ditch drop goal – and his men will surely scent blood as, in a season which will see men become Lions, they now wait at Murrayfield for the competition's easiest prey, Zebre.

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Glasgow won't stop believing

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