THIS has been a frustrating, disjointed PRO14 season for Glasgow Warriors, but as the campaign comes to a close, there are some grounds for genuine optimism.

They are still a far cry from the team that took the league by storm six years ago, or even the one that reached the final in 2019. But a coherent pattern of progress is emerging. Patchwork progress, and admittedly from a low starting point, yet progress all the same.

That much was evident in yesterday’s match at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi in Parma - a game in which the Warriors again made life difficult for themselves by going down to 13 men at one point, as they had done six days earlier against Leinster. When Ollie Smith followed Sam Johnson into the bin in the opening minutes of the second half and a Paolo Pescetto penalty stretched the home team’s lead to 20-10, things looked ominous for Danny Wilson’s side, who should have scored at least a couple more tries in the first half to add to the one that Ross Thompson did get.

But from that point onwards, everything began to go right for Glasgow. First they showed the confidence and character to weather the storm while two men down. And then, with Nick Grigg adding his voracious appetite for possession off the bench, they took control of the match, scoring three unanswered tries to claim a bonus-point victory that takes them up to fourth place in Conference B.

“It’s a challenge to come here and get a win, and we got a bonus-point win,” head coach Wilson said. “First half we left three tries out there where we should be away from them, and maybe a slightly more confident Glasgow Warriors would finish those opportunities off and get away from them by half-time. But that wasn’t the case, and all of a sudden our discipline let us down a little but.

“We were playing with 13 men yet again, but we hung on in there and we won the second half 21-3. So really what we set out as a game plan worked: we managed to wear them down enough to put them away when they were a bit more fatigued at the end of the game.” 

Yet if the game plan got Glasgow to their desired destination in the end, there were a few unscripted diversions along the way, beginning in the opening minutes when flanker Gregor Brown, making his first start, had to be taken off following a clash of heads with Michelangelo Biondelli, who left the field on a stretcher.

Pescetto and Thompson then exchanged penalties, before the Glasgow man put his side ahead with the first try of the game from a clever Cole Forbes kick. The stand-off added the conversion to make it 3-10, and at that point the match looked like plain sailing for the Warriors.

Rufus McLean twice came close to building on that lead either side of Potu Leavasa’s yellow card, but when Johnson followed his opponent into the bin for a dangerous tackle, Zebre hit back. Two tries from Mattia Bellini, both converted by Pescetto, put them seven points up at the break.  

Things looked bleak when Smith was yellow-carded for a deliberate knock-on a few minutes into the second half, but after that Pescetto penalty which gave his side a double-figures lead, the arrival of Grigg stiffened the Warriors’ resolve. First the substitute centre laid on a try for scrum-half Jamie Dobie, with his fellow-substitute Ian Keatley converting on his debut. 

After Enrico Lucchin became the fourth man to be deposited in the bin, a tap penalty deep in Zebre territory produced a try for Tom Gordon. Keatley’s conversion made it a four-point lead, and wisely, rather than sitting back in a bid to protect their advantage, Glasgow refused to relent in attack. Grigg himself got the bonus-point try five minutes from time, Keatley added two more points, and an afternoon that could have produced a humiliating first defeat by Zebre ended up in inspiring fashion for Wilson’s side.

“What you’ve seen from us in the last three weeks is far from the finished article, I know that - there’s been some really good stuff and some not-so-good stuff,” the coach added. “But ultimately there’s a huge amount of fight in this group of players. They’re up against it with 13 players then come back and finish strong. 

“I think the substitutions were important today. We got those right at the right time and I think those guys came on and made an impact - the likes of Nick Grigg and so on. And that allowed us to finish the game off.”