Dave Rennie insists Glasgow not panicking after poor start to season

Glasgow coach Dave Rennie is confident his team can turn things around. Picture: Ross MacDonald/SNS/SRU

A disappointing defeat at a venue where Glasgow have not lost since February 2014 leaves them with just one win this season, bottom half of their pool and below their weekend opponents, who are traditionally near the bottom of the table.

Rennie does not believe his likely departure to take charge of Australia at the end of the season will affect their form, but is looking forward to getting a double figure number of WorldCup players back over the next two weeks.

“We know we can turn it round, it is 21 rounds so we are not panicking,” said Rennie, after the game. “It is a disappointing start, we have traditionally been flyers right from the word go so we are going to have to chase from behind this year.

“We are working really hard, preparing well, but kick errors at key times are  hurting us.”

One obvious thing which could turn the season round is having their World Cup players back sooner rather than later, especially important in terms of getting everyone back and playing before Europe kicks off.

“We have five Scotland players available next week, plus DTH van der Merwe, so potentially six guys back next week and another half dozen the week after. We are going to have to gel those guys back in before Europe,” said Rennie.

They join a side with room to improve, to put it politely. A 6-0 deficit after playing against the wind in the first half did not seem too bad.

However, two sloppy tries given away straight after the break made the task far  harder and an injury time score for replacement centre Huw Jones was a minor consolation.

Captain Callum Gibbins admitted: “It was quite frustrating, I thought we created some opportunities in the first half to put some pressure on, but every time we created something in the next phase we dropped the ball or chose the wrong options.”