The Dragons slain, and a few demons laid to rest for good measure.
The Newport lot have been Glasgow’s bogey team down the years, but Sean Lineen’s side dogged out a victory that should have lifted them over that psychological hurdle. It was an ugly win, but the Warriors supporters could take some perverse satisfaction from the achievement, as the Dragons’ own victories have rarely been things of beauty.
Goodness knows, Glasgow misfired in many places that they could have lost the match many times over. At the finish, fly-half Duncan Weir picked up a man of the match award for his eight successful penalties – equalling the league record – but it was hardly a command performance from the playmaker.
Where Glasgow did impress was with the character and resolve they showed in adversity. They trailed at half-time, but their pack dug in after the break, with Chris Fusaro and Rob Harley putting in a power of work in the back row, and at the end they firmly deserved a result that moved them into the upper reaches of the RaboDirect PRO12 table. Lineen has watched his team lose such close encounters far too often, so he could be heartily satisfied with the outcome.
“It wasn’t a great game,” said Lineen, whose frustrations were compounded by an erratic performance by Marius Mitrea, the Italian referee. “But I’m delighted for the players. After losing to Treviso [two weeks ago] there was a lot said in the dressing room, but they’ve turned it around.”
It was understandable, after last weekend’s hammering of Cardiff, that Lineen chose only to tinker with his starting XV, bringing in only Ryan Grant and Fusaro. If the Glasgow crowd expected the momentum of that win in the Welsh capital to be continued, though, their hopes were quickly dashed when a clean break through the middle by Dragons wing Mike Poole set up an absurdly easy try for full-back Martyn Thomas near the right corner.
Panic could have spread when Matthew Jones added a penalty to his conversion of Thomas’s try to put the Dragons 10-3 ahead – Weir had landed a fifth-minute penalty for the Warriors – after 10 minutes, but another brace of penalties by the fly-half, the second for a bodycheck by Poole on Stuart Hogg, brought his side back to within one point with 15 minutes played.
Their try apart, the Dragons kept things characteristically tight during the first half, but that stuffy approach still dished up a succession of penalty chances. Jones clipped over a second kick in the 18th minute and a third 10 minutes later, and many in the ground thought he had landed another, in the 20th minute, but the touch judges took a different view and ruled that it had gone wide.
Even after Weir’s fourth penalty, in the 39th minute, Glasgow had no grounds for complaint about their 12-16 interval deficit. They had no real bite in contact, kicked too much hard-won possession away and never once threatened the Dragons’ line. By contrast, the Welsh side had controlled the territory cleverly, with Jones walloping the ball into the corners of the Firhill pitch like some sort of Dan Parks tribute act.
Glasgow had struggled to cope with the physical challenge set by the Dragons’ muscular pack in which the two locks, Adam Jones and Rob Sidoli, were immense. For the second half, Lineen brought Ryan Jones and Pat MacArthur into the fray in place of Johnnie Beattie and Finlay Gillies, and there were some promising early signs as the forwards worked the ball through the phases in a move that was threatening a try until Colin Shaw was penalised for holding on too long in the tackle.
If Shaw was guilty of impatience, the same could never be said of the nerveless Weir, who prodded Glasgow in front, 18-16, with a brace of third-quarter penalties. It was just as well that Weir kept splitting the sticks, for his kicking from hand from horribly wayward.
Yet Weir kept teeing them up and knocking them over. His penalties in the 63rd and 69th minutes nudged Glasgow further ahead, although they were sweating towards the end as the Dragons, having closed the gap with a penalty by Jason Tovey, attacked with gusto, if not the sharpness that might have swung victory their way.
analysis psychological hurdle is overcome as Glasgow defeat nemeses despite an average performance
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