Assistant coach Matt Taylor revealed that Glasgow Warriors have their minds back on rugby again after being caught up in the Paris atrocities.
The Scottish side were in France last Friday night for their European Rugby Champions Cup opener against Racing 92, which had been due to take place at the Stade Yves-du-Manoir in Colombe outside Paris on Saturday afternoon, when the attacks across the city which left at least 129 people dead, took place.
The match was postponed with the Warriors returning to Glasgow, where they have begun preparing for the visit on Saturday of Northampton, who got their Champions Cup campaign off to a winning start with a 15-11 victory over Scarlets at Franklin’s Gardens.
Taylor, who doubles up as Scotland’s defence coach during the international windows, spoke about the attacks which shocked the world, saying: “It is a real difficult time in France with what’s going on, it is a difficult time for everyone in Europe and our thoughts go out to the people involved,” before speaking about how the Warriors’ players are looking ahead to the weekend.
“All we can do as professional players is prepare really well and focus on our first home game in the European competition, and that is what we have done,” he said.
“We had a training run on the Saturday afternoon because we didn’t have the game and we did a few things in preparation for Northampton.
“Now we are back in Scotland and from the way we trained and the meetings we have had they are very focused on our rugby.
“I suppose we will reflect maybe at night but the guys have been really professional.
“Tuesday was one of the best training sessions I have been involved in during my time and hopefully that transfers into a good performance on Saturday.
“If we are talking rugby, both teams (Racing and Northampton) were reasonably similar in how they play so it was quite good leading into this game.
“A lot of things we prepared for with Racing was very similar with Northampton, which has been an advantage I suppose.
“On Saturday night the team sat in one room and the coaches in another and we watched Northampton play.
“We had a good idea of how they play and we were pretty spot on with the way they played against Scarlets, maybe a couple of variations.
“But we felt we had a pretty good idea about what they do and how they do it, and that will lead us into a pretty good performance at the weekend, hopefully.”