Glasgow Warriors are playing knockout rugby a week ahead of schedule in Saturday’s Guinness PRO12 regular season finale at Connacht, believes Josh Strauss.
The Scotland No 8 and the Warriors squad know that nothing less than a win will do in Galway if they want a home semi-final, so the clash with the season’s surprise package at the Sportsground is effectively a quarter-final.
“That’s true even if we end up playing Connacht again in the semi-final,” pointed out Strauss. “The focus is entirely on winning so I guess that makes it a knockout game.
“The aim is to finish the regular season on a high and there’s a great morale and confidence boost if you do get top spot ahead of the play-offs, especially this time after the run we’ve had.
“You obviously want to win every game you play in, but we also have to focus on this just being another game, not to lend too much importance to it.”
A victory would be Glasgow’s tenth in a row in the league – a streak that’s taken them from eighth to the top of the pile – but Strauss agrees that 12-in-a-row, taking in the semi-finals and final, is the ultimate aim.
“Every season you set a goal and the ultimate one, in any competition that you’re in, is to win it,” he said. “We started slowly as a club this season and mid-season we managed to turn it around.
“It’s been a full squad effort as, everyone has played a part in it and it’s shown a whole lot of character all around.
“A lot of it was down to it being a different sort of season with the World Cup, but things weren’t going as planned and you always sit down and have a talk about it.
“It wasn’t panic stations. But we did have that talk together after the Ulster game in Belfast (the last time they lost in the league) and that played a part in the turning point.
“We figured out what we needed to do to get to the play-offs, but also what we needed to do to get that top spot and a home semi-final.
“We sat down in our groups within the squad and worked it out between us like grown men. It’s been a real concerted effort and everyone worked hard and bought into it, which shows the character of the squad again.
“If you weren’t picked or were on the bench, you worked just as hard to make the preparation good for the rest of the team.”
The exposed nature of the Sportsground makes for a tricky proposition, but Glasgow have won on their last three visits to Galway.
“It’s usually windy and rainy, I don’t think I’ve played a game there when it’s been okay,” added Strauss. “We had a session today and the wind was quite strong, early on a few balls went down but then we pulled together and it as good preparation.
“We do talk about different things, especially as a forward pack, you’ve got to be a bit tighter and flatter in tough conditions. But we’ll decide what we do closer to the time, in the captain’s run maybe.”
In the meantime Glasgow will significantly raise the capacity of Scotstoun if they get the result they’re looking for over Connacht on Saturday and book a semi-final back at home.
Scotstoun’s 6800 seats have been sold out for their last four games and new temporary stands taking the capacity to 10,000 will be installed if the Warriors win in Galway.
