THE Dragons had obviously travelled north with a simple game plan, which could be characterised as "get Hastings".
They reasoned that if they could target the young, inexperienced fly-half, they would nullify the dangers that Glasgow had wide out and force the game into an old-fashioned arm-wrestle where they had a chance.
There were elements of the idea that worked, but one major failure: Adam Hastings is "slippery" – to shamelessly borrow Dave Rennie's description – and running with the ball sliced their defence to pieces. When they left him alone, there were still those dangerous backs lurking.
It was all part of the learning curve for the 21-year-old, and a valuable lesson in the range of options available when things become personal, but he sailed through it with a more-than-solid pass mark.
"I could have made a couple of better decisions but I will take that win," he reflected afterwards. "Into a wind like that, you maybe have to play a bit more and if a couple of passes had gone to hand we maybe would have broken them.
"It was really windy and we were getting really flat, especially in the first 20 minutes when we were all just wanting to get onto the ball. We should had taken a couple of yards of depth, which we spoke about at half time.
"There were a couple of bad kicks into that wind. I don’t think we had to exit too many times in the first half, we played a lot of rugby down their end. The second half, though, the wind was definitely a problem."
Hastings ran willingly, finishing second on the carrying statistics, only two metres short of the 80 gained by Huw Jones, who led the way. If the Dragons were going to make him a target, they would have to catch him first was the message he sent.
It was another performance which established that the youngster is growing into his role as the Glasgow playmaker so fast that he is bound to be attracting serious attention from Gregor Townsend sooner rather than later.
With Finn Russell again putting in a starring performance for Racing 92 in their win over Stade Francais yesterday and Duncan Weir coming back to form down at Worcester, suddenly the Scotland coach has a playmaker, an heir and a spare.
This was only Hastings' fourth start of the season and since he already has two man of the match medals sitting at home, he is clearly enjoying the new responsibility.
"It is just minutes in the pocket," he said. "I am getting a lot of reps at training and if you give anybody an opportunity they will look to take it. I feel I am doing that at the moment.
"We had some really good moments of play. We were amazing on the counter and strung together some really good moments in defence and attack. Now, it is just a question of doing it for 80 minutes.
"We are taking it one step at a time. After the loss last week we were just fully focussed on this weekend, the same with Zebre next week."
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