Gregor Townsend wants better Glasgow showing

Gregor Townsend, the Glasgow Warriors head coach. Picture: SNS

GLASGOW head coach Gregor Townsend believes that his team’s performance fell below that of recent Heineken Cup defeats in the 1872 Cup win over Edinburgh, and so he has a number of selection headaches before naming this week’s team for Wednesday night’s return leg at Scotstoun.

In a change from the usual Scotsman Rugby Show, in association with Ginger Grouse, this week we present the show in three bite-size parts - the view from the Glasgow camp, the view from Edinburgh and former Scotland flanker John Jeffrey gives us his insight into 2013 and what he hopes for in 2014.

In the Glasgow segment, Townsend spoke to Scotsman.com after the Warriors came from behind to win 20-16 at Murrayfield and insisted that his team had to improve again if they were to maintain the return to winning ways.

He said: “We have to look at our team selection but we know we’ll have to play better than that [last week] to win.

“Obviously, the result was an improvement but in parts of the game we were poorer than we had been against Cardiff, defensively especially. Defensively against Cardiff, especially in the second game, we defended really well and had a lot more possession but we lost it when we got into the 22.

“[Against Edinburgh] we never got much ball, we had to defend a lot and got narrow at times, and I think we got caught up in the emotion of the fixture with boys racing up to make big tackles rather than being composed and getting our spacing right in defence.

“In the first half we were on the back foot on too many occasion. Edinburgh played well right throughout the game but especially in the forward exchanges, and we had to show character, and our bench came on and make a difference, and we played better in the second half so in the end it was a really good win.

“A win is massive for your mental state, especially the players who haven’t had a win for two or three weeks. But we will have to play better than that because if we play like that, with Edinburgh bound to improve, it will be a tough one to win.”

Glasgow and Edinburgh will name their sides today with the visitors to Scotstoun looking for a win by more than four points to wrest the 1872 Cup back to the capital, and push themselves closer to the race for the RaboDirect PRO12 play-offs.