ONE win in the league may do no more than modestly improve your position in the table, but it can work wonders for your self-belief. That certainly appears to have been the case for Glasgow following their 45-17 win at Zebre on Saturday.

It was the Warriors’ first away win in any competition since they beat Newcastle in the Challenge Cup in April, and their first in the URC since a victory at Connacht back in January. And although the five points earned still leave them a modest ninth in the 16-team table, the fact that they won on the road at last has at least allowed them to approach a forthcoming tough group of games with genuine and welcome optimism.

Bath’s Recreation Ground is the next venue for Franco Smith’s team, on Saturday in their first Challenge Cup pool game of this season. Then it is Perpignan at home in the same competition before attention switches back to the league and the festive double-header against Edinburgh.

The fight on two fronts is sure to ask serious questions of the depth of the Warriors squad, but full-back Ollie Smith is convinced that the team can both continue their climb up the URC table and take a tilt at the Challenge Cup.

Glasgow may have been disappointed to miss out on the Champions Cup by a single place in the league, yet, after playing his part in the win at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi, Smith was adamant that they will apply themselves just as professionally in European rugby’s second-tier tournament.

“We’re approaching it as if we were playing in the Champions Cup – just as we do with the URC,” Smith said. “We speak about trying to reach the finals of both competitions.

“There’s still good competition in the Challenge Cup, so we know it’s not going to be easy. But we’re going to aim to win it, and hopefully we can do that and that starts this week.

“Bath are a strong outfit, so we’ll have to be firing all across the park. We’ve got that first away win now and we’ll look to get some momentum rolling. We know we can perform as well away from home as we do at home, so we have to look to crack on.”

They may indeed know that, but there was no harm in reminding themselves of their ability against Zebre. The Italians have failed to win anywhere, home or away, this season, but they put up a decent fight in the first half. They took the lead through the game’s opening try and only fell behind for the first time just before the break, when George Horne added a penalty to his earlier conversion of Sintu Manjezi’s try.

Crucially, that touchdown from the lock forward – his first for Glasgow – came mere minutes after Pierre Bruno had opened the scoring for the home team. The rapid response deterred Zebre from getting any ideas about causing an upset, and two tries in quick succession early in the second half – first from Sebastian Cancelliere and then from Stafford McDowall – killed off the contest.

Johnny Matthews then secured the bonus point with a dozen minutes left, prompting a visiting fan with a trumpet to play the Z Cars theme tune in homage to the Evertonian.

Jacques du Toit managed to grab a double for Zebre inside the final 10 minutes, but Domingo Miotti scored Glasgow’s fifth in between. Matthews then completed his own double deep into stoppage time, and with Horne keeping up his 100 per cent record with the boot, the Warriors ended up winning by four full scores.

“We spoke a lot about having to earn the right to score points,” Smith added. “No matter how long that took, we would have to stay in the fight.

“Zebre threw a lot at us and spent a lot of the first half in our 22 but we stayed in there with good defence. We said we were going to have pride in our defence and that’s what we did. At half time we spoke about being relentless in the second half and I thought we were.”

With three sides just a point below them, Glasgow are part of a mid-table logjam in the URC, but Smith is confident they can keep climbing into the upper half and then towards the top-four places in which teams get a home tie in the first round of the play-offs.

“We have five games in December and we want to get maximum points from each one if we can,” he added. “That’s always the aim.

“We need to right some wrongs and that the only way to do that is by taking our home form into all our away games. That’s going to be massive if we’re pushing for play-offs and that top-four spot that we feel we deserve.”