Glasgow Warriors choice of captain for tonight’s visit of Edinburgh looks to have offered some insight into the attempts being made to change the way they go about things as they bid to avoid another under-achieving campaign.
Hope had been expressed earlier this week that official co-captains Callum Gibbins and Ryan Wilson would return for this derby, but the former has been ruled out as a result of on-going concussion symptoms, while the latter will make his comeback from the bench after a two month absence.
With Chris Fusaro, who was leading the team in their absence, having suffered a season-ending injury, the obvious choices to take over were former club captain Jonny Gray and Rob Harley’s the club’s appearance record holder, who has also captained them many times. Instead Fraser Brown, who has something of a reputation for blunt-speaking directness has been put in charge and his coach believes the international hooker’s presence is part of what will bring a harder edge to their play than was in evidence when these teams met in December.
“Fraser Brown, Zander Fagerson, Scott Cummings - those guys didn’t play in those games around that time,” Dave Rennie observed.“We’ve certainly got a better team on the paddock and I think we’re playing better footie, but they’re a tough team that is doing well and we’re going to have to earn our points.”
In saying so he pointed to the quality of Edinburgh’s pack in particular, but there is clearly some irritation at Scotstoun regarding the doubts being raised about their own toughness, physically and mentally.
“Ever since we dropped to second in the conference behind Munster back in January we’ve been under pressure and we’ve not lost a game since,” Rennie noted.“To win titles you have to be able to perform under pressure and we’ve shown in recent weeks, especially in the last two rounds against Ulster here and Leinster in Dublin, that we can rise to those occasions and actually thrive when there is a lot at stake. We’ve got ourselves in a good spot and we know if we win tomorrow night we won’t have to leave Glasgow again this season.”
If it is not quite a case of placing asterisks against those results, Ulster appearing to have prioritised their match against Edinburgh the following week, while Leinster put out a sub-strength side while preparing for a Champions Cup semi-final, the one major blip in that period was the drubbing his men suffered in the biggest match of their season, their own Champions Cup quarter-final at Saracens. That has, though, only added to their desperation to prove a point by coming through the Pro14 play-offs at a time when the Irish provinces are back at their very best and likely to challenge them to the maximum.
“When you get to this stage of the year and you’ve got yourself in a position where you’re going to be in the play-offs, you know you’re only three quality 80-minute performances away from winning,” said Rennie. “Every game’s tough now. We’ve had a really good build-up.”
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