{"id":658616,"date":"2025-12-27T22:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T22:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/658616\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T22:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T22:49:12","slug":"glasgow-see-off-edinburgh-in-a-grim-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/658616\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasgow see off Edinburgh in a grim encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of the two head coaches, Franco Smith<\/strong> was the more satisfied given that his side achieved what they failed to do the last two years by backing up their home win before Christmas with an away win in the second leg of their 1872 Cup double-header, meaning the aggregate score over the two matches was 45-15. But there was no escaping the fact that the attack side of his team\u2019s performance fell some way short of the standards they are capable of.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not our easiest night out there, let\u2019s put it that way. I thought Edinburgh stepped up again: they\u2019re at home, they\u2019re a proud team, which I think Scotland must be proud of that as well. They\u2019ve got a lot of heart, we made a lot of contact between the two 15s again, which was something we wanted to avoid. But in the end, I\u2019m really, really proud that we stuck to plan and got it done.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we came with a plan a little bit different to last year\u2019s. It\u2019s a difficult period in this part of the season because emotion plays a big role. With Christmas and everybody seeing family and enjoying the day with family, sometimes you get drained in this period from emotion. \u201cWe planned to bring energy in another way through fresh guys coming off and having not played for a bit, with the idea that we can always have the other players coming on to finish the game regardless of what the score was.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we can do it [attack] better. We have done it better. But Edinburgh didn\u2019t allow us to play. They were good, aggressive with their line-speed. They put the decision making from our side under pressure and for some reason we looked for contact instead of playing away from the contact. I think it\u2019s a balance. I think it\u2019s 80 percent good pressure and 20 percent something we can fix or we want to fix.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Edinburgh head coach Sean Everitt<\/strong> was left scavenging crumbs of comfort once again fro his players\u2019 defensive efforts, while also pointing out the lengthy injury list he is currently dealing with (lengthened again during this match with Lewis Wells<\/strong> failing an HIA and Dylan Richardson<\/strong> suffering a rib injury which will need scanned_.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a great spectacle at all,\u201d he conceded. \u201cI was just chatting to [Glasgow attack coach] Nigel Carolan<\/strong>, and he\u2019s also frustrated at the way the Warriors performed, but I think the teams are really going at each other physically, and obviously defence is a big part of the game. Glasgow kept us out more than we kept them out, and ultimately they were the winners.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, attack is reliant on the set-piece operating and our line-out was put under pressure in the second half particularly, so we couldn\u2019t really get gain-line from there. It was a tough day at the office from that point of view.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you talk about improvements, we did get the ball to the edges a lot more [but] it\u2019s what we did with the ball on the edges that we need to work on,\u201d he added. \u201cIt was a four-point game after 71 minutes and then another error on set-piece attack, which seems to be the story of the two games that we\u2019ve had. It\u2019s certainly an area that we need to brush up on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last 10 minutes you\u2019re putting on some youngsters there. I think we\u2019re sitting on 22 injuries now, which is starting to take its toll on us, but we\u2019ll fight on, and hopefully we\u2019ll get some players returning next week as we go into the New Year and can build on that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is frustrating because not too long ago we put together a good attacking performance against Toulon. So, yeah, no player goes out onto the field and makes skill errors on purpose.\u00a0 I think the pressure does take its toll, but\u00a0I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s a lack of confidence. The team trains really well together during the week. So, yeah, as we know it\u2019s a work-on.\u201d<\/p>\n

This defeat leaves Edinburgh 11th in the URC table and with a lot of work to do to make the top-eight play-offs.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year it seems to be that way,\u201d Everitt conceded. \u201cBut, like I say, we\u2019ve got a long way to go in this competition. We\u2019ve got a game in hand as well, which we\u2019ve got to make the most of too.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the logs in December is probably not a good thing to do because a lot can change and a lot can happen. What we do have to do is improve on our performance tonight and take our strengths, which has been our defence, to Benetton next week and get a win there.\u201d<\/p>\n

We got an early indication of how this game was going to go when Glasgow snaffled two early line-outs and also picked up a scrum free-kick. Despite this faltering start, it was the hosts who scored first when Cammy Scott<\/strong> stroked home a ruck penalty on five minutes.<\/p>\n

There was an awful lot of dropped balls, passes top nobody, sloppy penalties and aimless kicks. The flow of play scarcely got above three phases, with contact rather than evasion order of the day.<\/p>\n

There was, however, the odd glimpse of light, such as when slick hands from Richardson and Wes Goosen<\/strong> gave Wells \u2013 a late call-up after Duhan van der Merwe<\/strong> dropped out with a hip injury \u2013 an opportunity to stretch his legs on the left, but he couldn\u2019t escape the cover defence, and it ended up being the winger\u2019s last involvement as he immediately disappeared down the tunnel for an HIA and didn\u2019t return. Richardson also retired injured at this point.<\/p>\n

Glasgow finally got off the mark just after the half hour mark with a lovely try, created by an ice-cool Adam Hastings<\/strong> cross-kick which sent the unmarked Jamie Dobie<\/strong> over on the left,<\/p>\n

Edinburgh managed to threaten again before half-time when Freddy Douglas<\/strong> stole the ball on the deck after Ollie Smith<\/strong> had tried to run the ball back from deep, and Ben Vellacott<\/strong> darted from the base then kicked ahead, but Dobie tidied up under very little pressure and then floated past several potential tacklers as escaped his own in-goal area.<\/p>\n

The second half was even more of a slog than the first 40. Angus Fraser<\/strong> was sent to the sin-bin for a high challenge on Scott following a lengthy discussion between referee Hollie Davidson<\/strong> and the TMO, but Edinburgh could not take advantage of that 10 minutes with an extra player, and Glasgow finally put the game to bed on 76 minutes with a try from the sniping George Horne,<\/strong> which he converted himself from right in front of the posts.<\/p>\n

And Dobie compounded Edinburgh\u2019s misery a few minutes later when he scooped up a ball which had squirted out the side a ruck and then chased down his own kick ahead to score on the left. That opened up the possibility of a bonus-point for the visitors, but it didn\u2019t happen. Glasgow were left slightly frustrated because they felt they were deprived the benefit of a penalty advantage when Dan Lancaster<\/strong> kicked the ball out the full-time whistle sounded.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Teams \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edinburgh: <\/strong>W Goosen; D Graham, M Currie, J Lang, L Wells (J Brown 25); C Scott (R Thompson 56), B Vellacott (C Shiel, 64); P Schoeman (M Jones 67), H Morris (J Blyth-Lafferty 67), P Hill (O Blyth-Lafferty 67), G Young (C Hunter-Hill 64), G Gilchrist, L McConnell, D Richardson (F Douglas, 26), M Bradbury.<\/p>\n

Glasgow Warriors: <\/strong>O Smith; K Steyn \u00a9, S McDowall, S Tuipulotu, J Dobie; A Hastings (D Lancaster. 61), G Horne (B Afshar, 76); P Schickerking (N McBeth 48), J Matthews (G Hiddleston, 48), S Talakai (Z Fagerson 48), A Craig, A Samuel (S Cummings 12-22, 48), M Fagerson, A Fraser (R Darge 61), J Dempsey (G Brown, 48).<\/p>\n

Referee:<\/strong> Hollie Davidson<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scorers \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edinburgh: <\/strong>Pen: Scott<\/p>\n

Glasgow Warriors: <\/strong>Tries: Dobie 2, Horne; Con: Hastings, Horne, Lancaster.<\/p>\n

Scoring sequence (Edinburgh first):<\/strong> 3-0; 3-5; 3-7 (h-t) 3-12; 3-14; 3-19; 3-21<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yellow card \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

Glasgow Warriors:<\/strong> Fraser (50 mins)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Attendance:<\/strong>38,179<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of the two head coaches, Franco Smith was the more satisfied given that his side achieved what they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,85185,10753,918,8979,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-658616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-divi","10":"tag-edinburgh-rugby","11":"tag-glasgow","12":"tag-glasgow-warriors","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}