As he looked back on Saturday’s humbling Champions Cup exit and insisted that its manner did not properly represent his team’s standing, soon to depart Glasgow Warriors assistant coach Jonathan Humphreys claimed not to understand what the man in charge of domestic rivals Edinburgh had meant when he said Scottish players are ’not a protected species.’
The implication of Richard Cockerill’s message had seemed to be that Scottish players have not been sufficiently exposed to the hard world of the results-based business in which they are employed, but the Welshman, who is leaving Glasgow at the end of the season to return home and join the management of his national team, tersely refused to accept that there was any validity in such a suggestion.
While both started in their current jobs at the same time two years ago, any difference there appears to be in the way the two former international hookers view things can perhaps be at least partly explained by the overall length of their association with Scottish rugby.
Humphreys moved into his current role in Glasgow after four years of doing the same job with Scotland, having been brought there by Scott Johnson, Murrayfield’s director of rugby, who is also on the point of departing, so it would seem reasonable to expect him to feel closely aligned to the philosophies that have driven a period in which Scotland’s professional teams have repeatedly failed on the European stage.
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Saturday’s defeat for both teams was the latest instance of that and while Cockerill’s Edinburgh can look back with some satisfaction, if not necessarily pride, on a campaign that saw them top their pool on their first appearance in the Champions Cup for five years, then out-play Munster for most of their quarter-final, the way Glasgow were brushed aside by Saracens was just their latest failure to cope when the intensity levels are increased.
There was, then, a Groundhog Day feel to Humphreys’ observation that: “It’s obviously very disappointing for us that the game went the way it did, but for us what’s defining for us is how we recover from this. We don’t feel that was anywhere close to being a reflection of us, but it’s about us going out there and showing what we are made of.”
To the suggestion that the message sounded rather familiar, he replied: “I think for us we haven’t had that conversation since Christmas. At Christmas time we felt we didn’t do ourselves justice and what we did from that was perform really well.
“We performed really well during the Six Nations, we got ourselves to the top of the league when we were floundering, so I don’t think it’s something we have a conversation about a lot. The game for me at Christmas was pretty similar and then we perform like we did at the weekend. Why we did that we’ve got to get to the bottom of and we’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
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The reality of the past two seasons is that Glasgow have largely cruised through their matches in the relatively nurturing environment of the Pro14, but have repeatedly come up short in the matches that matter.
Given the comparative performances in Europe and when the teams have gone head to head, it is very difficult not to draw conclusions from the changes made in terms of personnel and culture at Edinburgh since Cockerill took charge, with the way Glasgow’s management has sought to keep faith with a group of players who have received considerable adulation for their performances in the Pro14, without being able to make any progress in Europe.
Far from recognising a need for change, however, Humphreys insisted that those currently at Scotstoun should not be defined by Saturday’s seven try, 56 point beating.
“We performed well in a tough group, so of course there is. It’s just a lot of these things you need a fraction of patience,” he said.
“We’ve still got a pretty young group here in terms of being in European quarter-finals. It’s only the second time in this club’s history we’ve been there, so for us it’s a big step forward from where we’ve been, but on our day in a quarter-final hopefully next year we won’t allow this to happen again.”
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