Glasgow Warriors are prepared for “15 desperate men” when Racing 92 come to Scotstoun with their European Champions Cup hopes on the line, says assistant coach Kenny Murray.
The Warriors’ historic 23-14 victory in Paris on Saturday means that the ambitious, big-spending Parisians – current Top 14 champions and runners-up to Saracens in last year’s Champions’ Cup Final – have two losses from two starts and can’t afford a third.
“One more loss from them will probably make it nigh on impossible for them to go through,” suggested Murray. “They’ll have to come here and throw everything at us.
“We fully expect that they’ll play pretty much the same team, they even can strengthen it if they feel they’ve got an opportunity to do that, but I’d imagine they’ll be well up for it.
“Let’s face it, they probably expected to win last week and their record shows they don’t lose many games at home. Their fans and I’m sure the owners will have been disappointed as well so they’ll be coming here with a point to prove.”
The back-to-back matches are “interesting for coaches” but Murray thinks Glasgow’s basic structures were what gave Racing problems last week.
“We won’t change our structure and systems, but what we will look at is the fine bits of detail that we feel can get us an opportunity or get us an edge in the game,” he said.
“One thing we did well over there was the tempo and speed we played at, they really struggled to deal with that.”
And that should step up another gear on Scotstoun’s artificial pitch, he agreed, having beaten Racing on the similar pitch at Kilmarnock during last year’s European campaign.
“I’m sure they have plan on how to deal with it,” he said. “They won’t be used to the high tempo but they’ll have a strategy to slow us down more than they did last week.”
One thing Glasgow did do well in Paris was to subdue their former favourite Leone Nakarawa, although the Fijian pinched three lineouts to disrupt his old mates.
“He’s such an athletic sportsman, if he gets an early read on something then he can win the space and win the aerial battle quite quickly,” said Murray.
“We previewed him over the last few weeks and his performance had been up and down; he maybe wasn’t the same dynamic player he was when he was here, but he’s still a massive threat.
“Obviously we know what his strengths and weaknesses are so we looked at how can we ensure that he doesn’t go forward and attack. I thought we closed him down really well at times at the weekend, but again we expect him to play this week and on a 3G pitch that will suit his kind of game.”
