Glasgow’s players and staff were revelling in their fourth successive 1872 Cup win on Saturday night at Murrayfield, lording it again over their rivals from Edinburgh in the wake of an easy aggregate victory over Scottish Rugby’s now traditional festive double-header.
A little cold, calmer reflection, however, might see these two matches as an opportunity partly missed, and actually a standard of contest that should concern the watching Scotland interim coach Scott Johnson more than encourage him.
In terms of the bottom line of league business, the Warriors had to be happy with eight points and six tries from the two matches, a tally that skipper Al Kellock admitted he’d have “grabbed with both hands” if offered it ahead of the matches.
However Kellock, while proudly nursing the trophy for a fourth year, partly conceded in hindsight that the Warriors actually missed out.
Had they been properly clinical over both legs and put away only half of the eight glaring scoring chances I counted that they butchered over 160 minutes at Scotstoun and Murrayfield they might have inflicted total humiliation on their rivals, with a bolstered points differential and 10 points instead of eight.
That would have had them second in the Rabodirect PRO12 instead of fourth this morning, and might have had Michael Bradley out the door at Murrayfield.
Instead the near-misses including one good-looking score ruled out on a marginal technicality by referee Neil Paterson and a late comeback to finish only 21-17 in arrears put a gloss on the capital side’s effort even Bradley, to his credit, acknowledged.
“We were somehow in position to get something from the game but it would have been the greatest steal of all time,” he conceded, admitting that the team’s malaise and breakdown in decision-making was increasingly worrying to him.
“We’re better than we look,” he insisted, although a sharply different tack came from his main strike weapon Tim Visser who scored Edinburgh’s second try to pull level with Tommy Bowe on the all-time PRO12 try count.
“I couldn’t be less bothered. What concerns me most is where we are as team,” said the Scotland wing.
“I’d rather win games than break records, really. There’s no point in dressing it up in any way, celebrating records and tries. There’s no point in us saying we’re better than this because at the moment we’re not, and we have to concentrate on becoming better players and cutting out personal mistakes that put us in tough positions.”
Visser’s frustration probably stems from the paucity of ball he’s getting from a pack that were blitzed again in all departments on Saturday, not least the scrummage where they were beasted much as they had been by Saracens in their opening Heineken Cup game in October.
Seven minutes into the second half, a Greg Tonks line-kick found touch a yard inside the Glasgow 22.
That was only the second time Edinburgh had been in their rivals’ “redzone” all afternoon, and add on the last 20 minutes from Scotstoun eight days earlier and Bradley’s team had been inside Glasgow’s 22 once in more than an hour of rugby and that one occasion resulted in a mis-timed lineout and a knock-on.
Desperate to inject something into his team, Greig Laidlaw was reduced to quick taps, one of which backfired when Piers Francis served up an interception that Ruaridh Jackson returned 50 metres for his side’s second try.
Edinburgh’s big runners were neutered by Glasgow’s superior back row, where Ryan Wilson was man-of-the-match but Rob Harley was probably the player of the fortnight. Similarly Jackson, Peter Horne and a dominant Moray Low at tight-head probably boosted their Scotland chances considerably, while Stuart Hogg is showing signs of returning to his best form, although he will have nightmares about dropping the ball over the line in Glasgow’s most blatantly butchered “try”.
But Edinburgh’s obvious crisis stems any optimism. The pack is a shadow of that which carried the team to the Heineken Cup semis last year, and the switch of defensive coach from Tom Smith to Neil Back possibly at the behest of now-departed Scotland coach Andy Robinson looks like a huge blunder on the evidence of the season so far.
Francis is only three games into his Edinburgh career but the side looked measurably more threatening when he went off and Laidlaw moved to 10.
Netani Talei’s insistence that Edinburgh had more talented players than Glasgow last week was not remotely borne out by either of these games.
Glasgow’s players privately felt they weren’t given the chances they deserved by Robinson in the autumn internationals, given the form of the two pro teams.
Johnson’s history suggests he is more adventurous, but if he’s going to swap things around surely he’ll want to see the Warriors’ backs be more ruthless and their pack up against stiffer opposition than an Edinburgh team in apparent freefall.
stscott@thecourier.co.uk