At least one thing is certain – Glasgow will not play as badly again this season as they did on Saturday afternoon in the sunshine of Port Elizabeth.
My initial anger has now subsided enough for me to ask the question – what went wrong during their 38-28 loss?
Attitude
At times it looked like certain members of the team believed that being on the park was going to be enough to secure a victory against the Pro 14’s stragglers. These players should actually have been keener when they were handed an opportunity by Dave Rennie to show why they were worth becoming first pick, which many of them are not currently.
The simple efficiency displayed by the team in previous weeks was replaced with too much elaborate – or at times brain dead – play which inevitably put themselves under pressure. That of course lead to…
Mistakes – LOTS of MISTAKES
Let us be clear – mistakes happen, but this was different.
This felt a bit like late noughties Scotland (HUGOOOOO), where mistakes were compounded by further errors. When they had the choice, key decision makers failed to take the right option on an almost exclusive basis. Tackles were missed, passes dropped and try scoring opportunities were butchered. The most galling failure was the team’s inability to calm down and go back to the basic processes that have served them so far this season. Which, in turn, leads us onto….
Leadership
Co-Captains or not, Glasgow lacked leaders out there. Only when Adam Hastings (age 21, 9 starts) arrived did it look like the side had any guidance, which is particularly bad for the rest of them given this is the young fly half’s breakout season. You expect much more of those veteran Warriors who were involved before the late fightback.
There was so much wrong with this performance that I cannot begin to put into a sensibly written form, but what about the positives?
The try bonus point is the obvious one, but will this defeat be the making of any of these youngsters?
They say that great teams react positively to bad performances, so let’s see what this Glasgow bunch are made of. The Dragons at Scotstoun are up next this weekend and defeat is simply not an option.