The Warriors will not leave Glasgow for the Guinness PRO14 play-offs while Edinburgh’s season – which looked so promising only a month ago – ended abruptly and with no tangible reward in the 34-10 loss at Scotstoun.
Playing a classic game of defence and counter-punch, the Warriors led 34-3 going into the final five minutes having had roughly 20% of the ball. But it was the visible energy of their play, without the ball and especially the exhilarating four tries they scored when they briefly had it, that meant this was not a contest to be rated on possession or territory.
Glasgow will have a home quarter-final in two weeks against either Ulster or Connacht, both teams who have been handsomely defeated at Scotstoun over the last three months. Beyond lies the Grand Final at Celtic Park, and the clinical accuracy with which they’re currently playing means the Warriors fear no-one.
Edinburgh, meanwhile, don’t even have a Heineken Cup place next season to build on this year’s admirable campaign. They had lost their play-off hopes to Benetton’s win over Zebre before they kicked off, and the two points they needed to keep their season alive never seemed likely.
But for a brief 40-minute second-half resurgence in Llanelli, Edinburgh’s season really ended with their narrow Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final loss to Munster. The team went from relentless and driven to leaden-footed and static in the space of a week.
Glasgow, on the other hand, seem to have been galvanised by the humiliation in their European quarter-final against Saracens – “a debacle” Dave Rennie called it again on Saturday – and have visibly lifted their game for the final stretch of the season.
Both sides have had exactly the same gruelling schedule and the same demands made on them by Gregor Townsend’s international management team. Yet since the first week in January Glasgow have won all eight of their PRO14 fixtures while Edinburgh won just two of theirs.
The reason why was alluded to by Richard Cockerill after the game and illustrated by the players Glasgow had on the pitch. They were already down to their fourth-choice open-side in Tom Gordon (who was a deserved man of the match) and without Oli Kebble, George Turner, Tim Swinson, Nick Grigg and DTH van der Merwe. Then they lost Jonny Gray (sickness) and reserve hooker Grant Stewart (back spasms) on the day of the game.
As Rennie pointed out later, this has been the story of the Warriors season, and the head coach has actually done a fine job mixing and matching in that only Edinburgh (twice in December) and Saracens (three times) have outplayed his team in the last six months.
“I think we have made good shifts since the Saracens debacle, it has given us a bit of an edge and I think we saw that tonight,” said Rennie.
“We have had a bit of adversity before the game, but it’s just a usual week for the Warriors. It happens often, we just have to get on with it and I was really rapt with the character the boys showed.”
Cockerill, on the other hand, kept putting out his best team whenever he had them available this season. His Scotland stars weren’t overplayed in terms of the SRU’s player welfare protocols, but they looked to be running on fumes on Saturday.
Furthermore when the head coach was forced to bring in others later in the season – Matt Scott and Mark Bennett in midfield, or Simon Hickey and Dougie Fife on Saturday – they didn’t looked as if they quite fitted in.
“The way the team has performed this year, parts have been fantastic,” said Cockerill. “We’ve had some very big highs, but our lows have probably been lower than last year.
“Last year during Europe we were resting guys because we were in a different competition; this year we were going full out and maybe in hindsight the attrition has taken a bit more out of us than I thought. There are lessons for us all there.”
Edinburgh’s limited gameplan was turned against them. The patient pick-and-go game that beat Toulon and Montpellier in Europe was too predictable later in the season, the box kicking game less effective against Glasgow. And the “superstar” back row of John Barclay, Hamish Watson and Vili Mata were outfought by the unheralded Gordon and the returning Ryan Wilson.
In the backs, when Darcy Graham limped off he took Edinburgh’s remaining cutting edge with him. Glasgow, with Adam Hastings flush with confidence again and Stuart Hogg apparently set on leaving the club on a high, looked a huge threat whenever they had ball in hand.
Edinburgh still had an edge in the setpiece but referee Mike Adamson was fairly indulgent with the Warriors, especially during the 15 minutes after half-time when a yellow card or two might not have been unreasonable.
Teams a little less worn down than Edinburgh are still ahead, but no side seems to have the energy levels Glasgow are showing for the season’s run-in. It could serve them well in the next three weeks.
