FIVE Edinburgh wins in the last six derbies may suggest Glasgow Warriors have been playing into their neighbours’ hands but it is not going to force an immediate change of approach from the hosts at Scotstoun tomorrow.
Over the past few years the men from the capital have got a whole troop of monkeys off their backs. A first victory in the 1872 Challenge Cup for six years followed by back-to-back wins in the same season for the first time since the trophy was rebranded a decade ago and then, the first leg of that double having been achieved at Murrayfield, a first victory in Glasgow for 14 years at the end of last season.
Glasgow have generally been considered to have the stronger squad throughout that period, but have a squad designed to play a high-tempo game; whereas the Edinburgh pack, in particular, is better designed for an old-fashioned battle.
Yet as he anticipated tomorrow’s derby clash, Rob Harley admitted: “I don’t know if you can take the passion out of it – I don’t think you’d want to. It is just a necessary part of it.”
Naturally, the 27-year-old flanker believes he and his team-mates can channel their aggression more effectively than they have managed in the majority of recent derbies, not least last weekend’s embarrassing defeat at the hands of their rivals who played with only 14 men for all bar the first five minutes.
“It’s just directing it into the right areas and hopefully being the right side of aggressive and hopefully being deadly when you have the ball and not getting over-excited by it and making mistakes,” he said.
If that comes across as a slightly naive approach, there was a real danger of Harley compounding that impression with a simplistic-sounding analysis of Glasgow’s problem area at times this season.
“A mauling game is more down to the number of lineouts you have so that would purely be on how often the ball goes into touch,” he observed. “Edinburgh are obviously very good in the lineout but you are always going to have lineouts in a game and that is one of their main strengths. Any game they play against any opposition they are going to go to their maul.”
It’s good for us because we get a chance to come back and play against it again and hopefully right some of the wrongs.”
That may be so, but the number of lineouts also tends to be governed by opportunities teams have to kick penalties to touch, which in turn is down to the amount of pressure they generate on opponents at breakdowns. There is, then, an apparent danger that the pain of losing as they did leads to identifying the wrong things to right.
“It was tough to take,” said Harley. “That’s why we are trying to take the lessons from it. When you win you should try and take the lessons but it’s easier to take the lessons when you lose. With a loss there is a lot to look at and improve on and that’s the positive, that we get a chance to play the same team and hopefully improve.” Fair play to Edinburgh, they played really well. Playing with a man down is one of the hardest things you can do in the game and they played really well, given that challenge.
“So, if we look at that we can try and take some of those qualities, the determination that they showed, the physicality when they played a man down for the entire game and try and instil that into our game.”
In fairness there is an awareness they cannot allow Edinburgh the upper hand in the combat zones as they have been doing. “They have great players at the breakdown and we have to be good at adapting to that,” Harley said.
“If ball is slow how do we get quick ball? Where do we play? It is about playing our game and what is on,” said Harley.
All of which means moving the ball fluently, recycling quickly and seeking to generate a fast pace of play, but he admitted that knowing this does not in itself mean having learned anything new.
“We look to do that against every team. That comes from getting quick ball, from being connected in defence and getting up fast. That is usual for us,” he said. “We have looked at what we did. We are just going to do it better.”
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