IT takes a lot to get a grin out of Glasgow Warriors head coach Dave Rennie, so the players will just have to be happy with a satisfied boss after a match where they wrapped up the scoring bonus before half time and sat back in the second half.
“We’ll take that, six tries to three,” said Rennie. “I thought we dominated that first half and were reasonably clinical. The second half, we just struggled to get our hands on the ball; we dropped off a few tackles and they spent long spells at our end of the field.
“We scrambled pretty well but to get five points here is good, a lot of teams have struggled. They are a good side, a phenomenal amount of off-loads, and an enormous number of them stuck as well.
“We tried to kick in behind and put them under pressure but their ability to off-load and keep the ball alive was excellent. They played a good brand of footy, asked some questions of us defensively, but I’m happy with the way we stood up there.”
Not that it was error free, far from it, but as far as Rennie is concerned, that is the inevitable result of them trying to play a fast, attacking game where mistakes are likely.
“In the end we can play like some of the other sides, just drive and box kick – then we won’t make any mistakes,” he said. “To win this competition, you are going to have to play. A couple of individuals maybe had poor days with the hands but when we go through the tape I think we’ll find we did not turn over anywhere near the amount of ball we did a couple of weeks ago [against Edinburgh].
“We are not going to go into our shell, you won’t win the competition doing that. You want the perfect game but we are trying to play at a tempo that stresses teams and that is why we are scoring tries but it is not going to be perfect even though we are striving for that. There were a couple of excellent tries out wide and a couple of nice set-piece ones and it was good to get rewarded for a couple of line-out drives.”
It had never looked easy for Glasgow, they did make mistakes but when they did attack and hold on to the ball, they were unstoppable from the time Matt Fagerson, the No8, touched down at the back of a driving maul.
The problem was that it made it hard for them to settle, which turned out to be totally justified as Zebre won the ball in the visitors’ 22, probed on both sides looking for a gap before full-back Edoardo Padovani, who has just come home after a stint with Toulon, found space with No 8 Renato Giammarioli throwing himself over the line to finish the move.
The Scottish firepower was always superior, however – as they demonstrated when Huw Jones won a scrum with his kick and chase before scrum-half George Horne orchestrated the break and wing Lee Jones finished the move off.
Glasgow opened further daylight when they turned down another
kickable penalty to go to the corner and this time earned a penalty try when the driving maul was brought down a few feet short.
The warning signs were there, however, as Zebre kept up their high-pace assault. Though all it earned was a penalty from scrum-half Marcello Violi, they were still in range and knew it.
The key moment came just before half time when Adam Ashe, on for Chris Fusaro, another concussion victim, found a way through on the right and gave Horne just enough space to squeeze over for his seventh Glasgow try to cement his place as the team’s leading scorer.
Glasgow definitely fell off the pace in the second half, with Zebre starting to get a foothold in the scrum and continuing the attacking style that had brought threats but little results in the first half.
The second 40 finished at two tries apiece, Maxime Mbanda and Tomasson D’Apice, the flanker and hooker respectively, going over from short range while Glasgow showed more of their flair with Finn Russell creating both – one with a miss pass that ended with Lee Jones going over, the second a delicate chip kick that resulted in Nick Grigg scoring.
Scorers, Zebre: Tries: Giammarioli, Mbanda, D’Apice. Con: Violi. Pen: Violi.
Glasgow Warriors – Tries: Fagerson, L Jones (2), Pen try, G Horne, Grigg. Cons: Russell (4), Pen con.
Zebre: E Padovani; R Parata, G Bisegni, T Castello (C) (C Gaffney, 57), G Venditti; C Canna, M Violi (G Palazzani, 66); A Lovotti (A De Marchi, 64), T D’Apice (L Luus, 64), E Bello (R Tenga, 63), D Sisi, G Biagi (V Bernabo, 75), M Mbanda (D Minnie, 74), J Meyer, R Giammarioli.
Glasgow Warriors: R Jackson (B Thomson, 64); L Jones, H Jones, N Grigg, N Matawalu; F Russell (P Horne, 63), G Horne (H Pyrgos, 63); A Allan (O Kebble, 58), P MacArthur (J Malcolm, 51), S Halanukonuka (D Rae, 58), G Peterson (K McDonald, 61 ), J Gray, R Harley (C), C Fusaro (A Ashe, 18), M Fagerson.
Referee: A Brace (Ireland)
Attendance: 2000
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