Al Kellock, the Glasgow Warriors captain, has issued a defiant "Not Dead Yet" message ahead of tonight's critical Heineken Cup match with Cardiff Blues at Scotstoun, claiming that his side is still firmly in the running to reach the last eight of the competition.
However, Kellock also warned that keeping their European ambitions on track will take a far better performance than the one the Warriors delivered in their 29-20 loss to the Blues in Wales last Friday.
That defeat, coupled with their setback at Toulon on the tournament's opening weekend, has left Glasgow's hopes hanging by a thread, one that will certainly be snapped if they lose again this evening. Even if they do get the better of the Blues, who will be missing a number of top-name players, a failure to collect a bonus point would be seen as a missed opportunity.
The Warriors are bottom of Pool 2 but a bonus-point win would almost certainly lever them into second place, a position they would then retain until the last two rounds of games in January if, as expected, Toulon beat Exeter Chiefs in France tomorrow.
"We're not out of it," said Kellock, who made his 50th Heineken Cup appearance at the Arms Park. "If we win this week then we'll go into the last two games and have to win both of them too. You have to win one away, minimum. But if we can do that we will put ourselves in the mix. We still have one away game. But one away only works if you get enough out of your home games.
"We have the ability to do that. When we click I believe we will get the points we need. But the first thing we have to do is make sure we click and get things right."
Coach Gregor Townsend has made eight changes to the side that started in Cardiff. Josh Strauss and DTH Van der Merwe, two of the stars of last season's impressive RaboDirect PRO12 campaign, have been dropped to the bench. However, Townsend has kept faith with Niko Matawalu at scrum-half, ignoring the criticism that came the Fijian's way after last weekend's match.
For his part, Kellock stressed that accuracy had been the problem in the defeat, rather than personnel or endeavour. "What I say every week is that we must go back to our foundations, which are hard work, aggression, accuracy and a physical edge," he explained. "If one of those is missing then we won't win games because teams know what we can do.
"We are doing some things really well. It's not like there has been one issue over the past few weeks. I agree that there have not been any perfect performances, but you could pick bits out of each game and say that's where we need to improve and it's happened.
"My main issue is that we need to put it all together. You will not do that in every game of the season, but we need to get it back there pretty quickly."
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