IT may have been a nail biter of a win for Glasgow Warriors in the first leg of the 1872 Cup but head coach Dave Rennie was full of praise for his
players’ spirit and determination as they dug their way out of an arm-wrestle.
“We showed a lot of character and defended outstandingly well,” he said. “We turned over a lot of ball from counter-ruck and it was pleasing to get the result in the end. When you play Edinburgh, they’re generally arm-wrestles because they’re going to kick a lot. I thought we defused the high ball really well and that was always going to be really important.
“Our discipline was disappointing in the first half. We can question some of the referee’s decisions but we led the penalty count 3-0 at one stage then let it go to 3-8. That gave them a chance to piggyback yardage down the field and keep the scoreboard ticking over.”
On top of the general resolution and determination that kept Edinburgh to a single try, he was also happy to pick out a couple of individual performances, in particular Zander Fagerson, man of the match after an outstanding shift at tighthead where he won scrum penalties, stole turnovers, tackled enthusiastically and carried the ball with ground-eating bite.
“He scrummaged really well, but around the field, carrying, cleaning, tackling, and initiating a lot of our counter ruck. He’s got a massive engine,” said Rennie. “I thought he was fantastic. He’s carrying the can at the moment with D’Arcy Rae out for a long period of time and Siua Halanukonuka still a month away. We’re getting our pound of flesh out of him.
“It’s not our plan for him to play 80 mins all the time but when the games are tight you want your best tight-head out there. He’s a rarity as far as tight-heads go as clearly he can play a full game.”
Now, the task is to take that confidence into next week’s return match at BT Murrayfield, where Glasgow have not won since Boxing Day 2016.
“We can take confidence from what we did without the ball,” he said. “Our set-piece was pretty strong. We’ve got to be bold and still play a bit of footy, and I thought we played within our shell a bit at times.
“We’ll certainly kick ball back but we’ve got to mix that up. It’s good to win a tight game and we’ll take a bit of confidence out of that for next week.
“Both sides defended really well. We knew Edinburgh would kick a lot and we were prepared to kick a bit back – we kicked too much at times, especially when we had some opportunities from deep with a number of their big fellas in front of us.
“The option when Adam [Hastings] went in behind was a good one, obviously, and we created another couple of opportunities. Tommy [Seymour] can’t get a ball to sit up for him this year, and Scotty [Cummings] split them just before half time.”
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