Glasgow Warriors 35

Bulls 21

DAVID BARNES @ Scotstoun

JUST as they did a fortnight ago, Glasgow Warriors produced an abrasive and ambitious performance to sweep to a bonus-point win at home. This victory was built on a breath-taking first half in which Franco Smith’s boys scored four tries to their opponents’ one, and although they ran out of steam as an attacking force during the second-half, they continued to defend like their lives depended on it, meaning that Bulls were never really in the contest.

This United Rugby Championship round four success was even more impressive than Glasgow’s round two result against Cardiff because of the calibre of the opposition (last season’s United Rugby Championship finalists who had won their fist three matches of this season). However, it is hard to escape the feeling that we can only really start believing that real progress is being made once Warriors start backing up their fine recent home form by producing something more robust on the road, starting against the Sharks in Durban next weekend followed by the Lions in Johannesburg the weekend after.

Warriors have lost seven games away from home on the bounce since beating Newcastle Falcons at Kingston Park in mid-April. They may have played slightly better away to the Ospreys last weekend than they did away to Benetton two weeks before that, but the outcome was the same. If Warriors want to become more than a mid-table team scrapping to make the play-offs each season then they need to start playing with the same courage and conviction away from Scotstoun as they do at their home ground.

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“There is still a lot to improve on and that’s the best part for me,” said head coach Smith afterwards. “We worked hard all pre-season knowing that we would have to match the South African teams physically, and that was important to what we manged to achieve tonight.

“The momentum was taken away from us in the second half because we had 10 penalties blown against us, so we couldn’t build anything. But the benefit of that is that we have to learn to win with the ball and without it, and we did that night  with the way we defended. Mentally and physically, we stayed tough when things weren’t going our way.”

Warriors raced into a seventh minute lead when they kicked a penalty to the corner then launched a series of close-range attacks, which culminated in man-of-the-match Matt Fagerson bustling over. George Horne added the conversion and Warriors kept their foot on the gas straight from the restart, scoring their second just three minutes later.

This time captain for the night Sione Tuipulotu and hooker Fraser Brown combined to send Sebastian Cancelliere on a 30-yard dash to the line.

It wasn’t all one-way traffic and Bulls pulled seven points back when No 8 Elrigh Louw snaffled possession from Horne as he tried to break from the base of a ruck and Kurt-Lee Arendse streaked home unchallenged off that turnover ball.

Warriors counter-punched immediately through Scott Cummings burrowing over after another penalty had been kicked to the corner for a close-range line-out, and they then rode their luck when Ruan Nortje collected his own charge-down of a sloppy Tom Jordan clearance and thundered over the line, only for the Television Match Official to rule that there had been a knock-on when the loose ball ricocheted off a Bulls player before being picked up.

If lady luck had smiled on the home team on that occasion, then the credit is all Glasgow’s for the way they defended the next Bulls attack, counter-rucking their way to a turnover and then winning a penalty which allowed Jordan to clear the danger. It wasn’t the last time that Warriors aggression and the breakdown won possession back for the home team at a crucial moment.

Glasgow’s resilience in defence during the middle section of the first half was rewarded when the pendulum swung back their way five minutes before the break, and the bonus-point was secured with a moment of audacious individual brilliance from Horne..

Jordan sweeping round and hitting the line hard put Warriors on the front foot near halfway, and, unperturbed by his mishap the last time he tried to break from the base, Horne picked up and scampered through a gap. He made it all way to five metres from the Bulls line before some desperate defence pulled him down, only for the live-wire scrum-half to bounce straight back to his feet and catapult himself out of the grasp of two defenders for a try which got Scotstoun bouncing.

Warriors started the second half as they ended the first and another breathless passage of play led to try number five when Cancelliere danced past his marker and then sent Josh McKay over with a brilliant one-handed offload.

Both sides were reduced to 14 men for 10 minutes when Horne and Louw found themselves in a David versus Goliath type tussle on the deck. No punches were thrown but it was pretty unsavoury and unnecessary, so Irish referee Andrew Brace sent the little Scottish scrum-half and the huge South African No 8 for a spell in the cooler.

“He doesn’t have a size problem – he thinks he’s as tall as a giant,” was Smith’s assessment of Horne afterwards. “It was unfortunate that he injured his back in the gym so missed last week but the break gave him more energy because he was definitely applying himself to the maximum tonight.”

Replacement hooker Bismarck Du Plessis bustled in for Bulls’ second try on the hour mark, and Chris Smith once again added the conversion, which theoretically at least kept the contest alive – but Warriors weren’t in any mood to further loosen their grip on the game.

It took some great defensive work from Embrose Papier, Bulls’ replacement scrum-half, to prevent Gregor Brown from getting the ball down over the line, then Cancelliere launched another promising attack up the left touchline, but a careless fumble by Jordan meant that opportunity came to nothing as well.

And when Bulls had another opportunity on the right, Cancelliere got back superbly to tackle Stedman Gans into touch five yards from the line, and then a brilliant counter-ruck bang in front of the Warriors posts earned another turnover a few minutes later.

It looked like the home team scored their sixth try when George Turner hacked a loose ball forward twice and Cancelliere was first to the ball as it bobbled in the in-goal area, but referee Brace was again referred it to the TMO who ruled that there had been an obstruction by Warriors replacement Sintu Manjezi at the start of that passage of play.

Janko Swanepol got over for a consolation score towards the end.

Teams –

Glasgow Warriors: McKay; S Cancelliere, S Tuipulotu, S Johnson, C Forbes (A Price 56); T Jordan (D Miotti. 66), G Horne; J Bhatti (N McBeth 64), F Brown (G Turner 53), Z Fagerson (L Sordoni 64), S Cummings (JP du Preez 74), R Gray (S Manjezi 53), G Brown (R Wilson 66), T Gordon, M Fagerson.

Bulls: K Arendse; C Hendricks (W Simelane. 71), L Maple, D Kriel, S Gans; C Smith (M Steyn 69), Z Burger (E Papier 53); G Steenkamp (S Matanzima 53), J Wessels (D Du Plessis 53), F Klopper (M Smith 53), W Steenkamp (J Swanepoel, 66), R Nortje, M Coetzee, M van Staden, E Louw (R Ludwig 66).

Referee: Andrew Brace (Ireland)

Scorers – 

Glasgow Warriors: Tries: Fagerson, Cancelliere, Cummings, Horne, McKay; Cons: Horne 5.

Bulls: Tries: Arendse, Du Plessis,, Swanepoel; Con: Smith 2, Steyn.

Scoring sequence (Glasgow Warriors first): 5-0; 7-0; 12-0; 14-0; 14-5; 14-7; 19-7; 21-7; 26-7; 28-7 (h-t) 33-7; 35-7; 35-12; 34-14; 35-19; 35-21.

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