Rugby being an ultimate team sport, it’s extraordinary difficult for one single man to turn the course of a game on his own.
Most tries, and the winning of most penalties, come from a collective effort. A placekicker may turn the tide with unerring accuracy, but more often than not it’s the pack that have won him the opportunities.
Saturday at Scotstoun was the closest you’ll see to one man turning a rugby game single-handed. Tommy Seymour’s quartet of scores, but specifically his two tries in three second half minutes which transformed a ten point deficit into a four point lead, propelled Glasgow to a 33-25 win over play-off rivals Leinster.
The Irish province, without their biggest guns by order of the IRFU but showing a strength in depth that will make them a Guinness PRO12 play-off team once again, were in position to run away with the game before Seymour turned it on its head.
Three tries scored, much more coherent with the ball and holding on to it for the vast majority of the minutes it was in play, their defence soaking up Glasgow’s probings and forcing penalty turnovers; the Dubliners were completely on top and Scotstoun was silenced.
Then Leinster’s 10 Joey Carbery, having looked like a veteran playmaker all afternoon, suddenly looked like the rookie he actually is with a dolly of a pass on his own 22 that screamed “intercept me!” Seymour did and ran unchallenged under the posts.
Possibly only three pairs of Glasgow hands touched the ball doing routine chores – kick-off reception, delivery and exit kick – before Seymour stepped in again.
This time Noel Reid’s hurried pass in nearly the same spot as the intercept hit the deck and bounced into the wing’s hands, and his incredible finishing instincts took over.
“It was a lot of luck,” said Seymour afterwards. “Getting the ball like that, you’re looking not to get isolated, and try to set up a good platform to go again.
“Luckily enough it fell in the right place, I had a look up, and as you do I tried to go for the gap.”
There was actually no gap but Seymour bust a lane between two surprised defenders and then hared for the line, chased by a posse of Leinster players in their awful “high-vis” change shirts, looking for all the world like the security staff chasing a pitch invader.
Seymour’s other two tries in his memorable quartet were more a measure of the collective effort, as he was keen to stress afterwards.
Most of the team got their hands on the ball during the build-up to his first, while a rehearsed move off a rock-solid scrum saw him pick a perfect line for the fourth.
Nobody in the squad was overly satisfied, however, not even the four-try hero.
“We were under the pump a little bit for large parts of the first half, we looked effective when we had the ball and score two tries, but the time we did was so few and far between,” he said.
“We’d got ourselves into a dangerous position. The character this team has in terms of being able to take on harsh words at half-time and react to them very quickly, I think that showed.
“But it’s a lot of relief that we’ve got the win. To deny them the bonus point and get one ourselves was an excellent finish to what was an incredibly difficult game.”
Head coach Gregor Townsend thought his team “probably should have been more behind at half-time.”
“We weren’t on our game defensively and we were up against it, but there was a massive improvement in the second half and Tommy stepped up,” he said.
“He is in fantastic form,” he said of his wing, now with six tries in just two PRO12 games. “But this is a marker for us in that we clearly have a lot more work to do.
“We have to be delighted with the start because we knew how tough it would be playing last year’s finalists in the first two games. But next week we’re away to another team that are unbeaten (Cardiff) and if we play like we did here in the first 50 minutes we’ll be in trouble.”
