GLASGOW have the chance to climb into the PRO14 play-off places when they meet Dragons on Saturday night, and assistant coach Kenny Murray believes that a second win in a week would provide the ideal boost to the squad as they prepare for their Champions Cup campaign.
The victory against Cardiff on Sunday was the Warriors’ first in five games, and came after a particularly tough run of fixtures that included losses to the three unbeaten Irish provinces. Two of those teams, Ulster and Leinster, are well clear at the top of Conference A, but a win against the Dragons could lift Glasgow above the Ospreys and into third. The Ospreys will have a game in hand, yet even so, it would be another positive sign that the Warriors have put a difficult period behind them and are ready to face the challenge of Exeter and Lyon in Europe later this month.
“It’s been quite a rough four or five weeks losing those games prior to the Cardiff game,” Murray said yesterday. “There were bits in those games where we played well, but we probably just got overpowered a little bit by Leinster, Ulster and Munster.
“It was good to get a win at the weekend. I thought the boys showed a lot of resilience. When we went a try down, because of where we had been over the last three or four weeks losing games, the boys’ heads could maybe have dropped, but we showed a lot of determination to keep going and fight for the win. I thought it was a real big pat on the back for the boys to do that.
“The Dragons are coming this week. They had a good win at Treviso at the weekend. They don’t lose as many players as some of the other teams, so they’ve probably got a bit more cohesion in their team, albeit they’ve not played for a few weeks prior to Treviso. They’ll be tough to play against, but it would be great if we could come out of the last two games with two wins going into Europe.”
Huw Jones, who scored the try that clinched the match in the 19-10 win over Cardiff, has now been recalled by Scotland and is unlikely to be available to play against the Dragons. Leone Nakarawa has now resumed running after being out for some time with a knee injury, but he could still be a couple of weeks away from making a return.
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