THERE is nothing quite like humiliation to concentrate the mind.
So Newport Gwent Dragons can expect that their position as the only team to beat Glasgow Warriors home and away last season should come back to haunt them when the Scots arrive at Rodney Parade this afternoon.
The Welsh side knows how it feels. Two seasons ago they conceded 37 points at Scotstoun and a remarkable 60 in the return match at their own ground to break a run of nip-and-tuck encounters where they had given as good as they had got over a number of years.
They took their revenge, though, becoming the only side to do the league double over Glasgow in the process, joining Leinster and Munster as the only teams to defeat the Scots during the regular season. What makes it more startling is that even though Glasgow went on to the reach the league final and Edinburgh could not make the top six, the team from the Scottish capital were one of the five who beat the Dragons home and away. The win in Scotstoun was the Welsh club's only away victory of the league season.
All of which means, as DTH van der Merwe pointed out, that there is no shortage of motivation in the Glasgow ranks or much danger of the kind of complacency that may have been there when the sides met last seson.
"They are our Achilles heel team," said DTH van der Merwe, the Canadian wing back selected for this game. "Last season they were hurting from the year before and beat us home and away; maybe we took them too lightly. In the past they have always been the team that we have struggled against. They are a very physical unit.
"We go out every week to play our best; we maybe did not play our best against them last season but they put us under pressure to force mistakes. That just shows they are a quality side. We won nine out of 11 away games so losing there just shows they know how to put good teams away.
"They are a side with no superstars until this year when they made a few signings. The Connacht of Wales if you like, they play for each other and in the end that has worked for them. All week we have trained for their blitz defence with people who are not in the side running it so we can try the different strategies on how to beat it. We are looking forward to the opportunity."
Glasgow are coming off a high, having travelled to Cardiff last week to see off the Blues rather less comfortably than the 33-12 scoreline suggests.
What is starting to make Glasgow tick is that they are becoming a side where they look round the changing room, look at the players nearby, and say to themselves: "Thank goodness he's on my side". Even when the opposition is packed with British & Irish Lions, as was the case last week, they look around and say: "You know what? My guy is just as good".
It brings the kind of confidence nothing can buy, exemplified by the change at full-back this week with Stuart Hogg, one of the handful of Scottish Lions, back after being rested over early games, and displacing Peter Murchie, one of the side's outstanding performers in the season's opening matches.
"Peter [Murchie] has played really well, he has played the last four games [including the preseason] and has been outstanding the last two," said Gregor Townsend, the head coach. "Stuart [Hogg] did come on the bench to cover injuries in the Leinster game and has been looking really good in training. I am looking forward to seeing him play. Physically he is in great shape. He had a long summer in terms of being on all four weeks of the tour and then in the Commonwealth Games sevens, but he has not had a huge amount of rugby this year and will be hoping he can play a lot more."
Townsend has made a virtue of chopping and changing his team between games, so it is a bit of a surprise that, despite not making their debuts until well into last season, this is a landmark game for both Josh Strauss and Niko Matawalu, who are both making their 50th appearances for the club.
Matawalu is earning the reward for coming off the bench to score two game-turning tries last week with his first start of the season while Strauss is back as No.8 and captain in the continued absence of Al Kellock, who is one of a number of injured players expected to return to Glasgow action in the A-team game against Edinburgh on Monday.
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