BILLED in advance as the competition’s group of death, Pool 2 of the European Champions Cup, which concluded in Montpellier and Scotstoun on Saturday, ultimately provided the latest evidence of the gulf that exists between the continent’s main competition and its respective domestic leagues.
The French club entered it atop the French Top 14, Exeter Chiefs as English champions and Glasgow Warriors as the only unbeaten side in Europe at that point in the season. Yet Leinster’s Champions Cup team eased past them all to finish as the only team in the competition to win each of its six matches, a sequence concluded when they denied Montpellier so much as a losing bonus point on their own turf.
At the other end of the table, Glasgow Warriors managed to avoid the ignominy of finishing with the alternative kind of 100 per cent record by demonstrating supreme courage in a first half that was ridiculously one-sided in terms of all statistics except those that matter then, after the interval, their capacity to play a highly entertaining brand of rugby.
Those observations about both their defence and attack, however, need to carry the caveat of the phrase ‘when they are allowed to’, because particularly during that opening period, when they had so much of the ball that they should easily have secured the win that would have secured a quarter-final place, Exeter Chiefs played into Glasgow’s hands. Restricting yourselves to picking, driving and inviting one-out runners to pound relentlessly at the opposition is to play into the hands of a team containing men like Jonny Gray, Rob Harley, Adam Ashe and Alex Dunbar, who will tackle opponents all day and the next day and the next, albeit at a cost as Dunbar, George Turner and Matt Smith all suffered injuries which ended their involvement prematurely.
As one of the few sides from the stodgy English Premiership to have managed to develop a reputation for at least some creativity in recent seasons within a competition in which the obsession with relegation promotes conservatism rather than ambition, it seemed, though, that the Chiefs had drawn too much from their previous encounter with Glasgow in October. Then the PRO14 pace-setters had made a lively start, before the Chiefs reverted to the traditional English method of subduing Scottish upstarts, by bludgeoning their way to victory, so it was natural that they should seek to do so again after they once again found themselves behind to a piece of brilliance that let Stuart Hogg get on the scoreboard just 69 seconds into his latest comeback.
That had been a typically opportunistic Glasgow score, Finn Russell having spotted a body’s width of room to squeeze through on the right, before finding support from half-back partner George Horne, who looks a more exciting prospect with every week and showed real composure in linking calmly and neatly to the predatory and hungry two-time Lion.
In dealing with what was thrown at them there was some reward for the hard work Glasgow have been doing in seeking to address the particular weakness exploited that night in Devon, as they managed, at key moments, to disrupt the Chiefs lineout sufficiently to prevent them from getting their mauling game going. That threat neutralised, apart from one alarm when Huw Jones showed exceptional dexterity in preventing Ian Whitten from grounding the ball as he slid over the try-line, they looked as comfortable as it is possible to do in repelling such imposing opponents for the near 39 minutes it took before Sam Simmonds finally battered his way over.
Glasgow then earned their opportunity to take charge when an attack that had created a two-man overlap, was broken up by Nic White. Even after several views of the replay it was hard to say whether he had done so illegally as, in moving to smother Finn Russell, his hand blocked the stand off’s pass to Grant Stewart, but once referee Romaine Poite had decided there was malice aforethought then it was inevitably double-indemnity time as a penalty try was accompanied by a sin-binning.
Glasgow took full advantage with two more scintillating long-range scores finished by Tommy Seymour and Zander Fagerson, putting the match beyond the Chiefs’ reach, though only just as they tantalised themselves yet further by demonstrating what might have been had they shown greater imagination earlier, in producing two fine tries of their own from Don Armand and Whitten.
In the end, then, the match encapsulated the entire European campaign from a Scottish and English perspective, exposing the ongoing vulnerabilities of the professional set-ups on either side of the border as a formidable side that was too slow to utilise its full weaponry, succumbed to doughty fechters who still lack the heavy weaponry required to sustain campaigns against the super-powers, but have become feared guerrilla Warriors.
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