Lineen sticks with team as he targets win in England

THERE was a clear desire evident in Glasgow coach Sean Lineen when he named the team yesterday that will travel to Bath this weekend and attempt to strike a first Heineken Cup victory on English soil.

What prompted him to make the rare move of sticking with the same XV that lost the week before, however, was recognition of similar determination within the squad at the conclusion of Sunday’s penultimate pool match with Leinster, which the Irish side won 23-16.

He explained: “It’s unchanged partly because of what was said in the changing room. The players were not happy with the result. In fact we were bitterly disappointed and, as a group and individuals, it was what they said they needed to do that I was very impressed by.

“This [winning at Bath] would be massive for Glasgow, right up there with anything the team has achieved in my time. But it’s not so much for me, it’s for the players. As a coach you take great satisfaction from seeing the guys coming off the field knowing they’ve done a job, and with some of the victories we’ve had this season it has been privilege to be there.

“But for me, Shade [Munro] and Gary [Mercer], we’ve been here a while and we can see the squad growing and maturing, and the ambition growing, and with Edinburgh doing well too we have two teams pushing each other upwards. And so we have to do everything we can on Saturday in Bath to make that statement, and I can really see in their eyes that the players want to go down and give a good account of themselves for Glasgow but for Scottish rugby as well.

“The only team we’ve lost to at the moment is the Heineken Cup champions and we’ve never won in England but have had some cracking games down there.”

There has always been hope and ambition but whether there has been the same belief in the squad the past, as exists this season after beating Bath at home, is open to conjecture. Yet, the last time the teams met at the Rec, in 2008-9 Bath scraped through a cracking match as 35-31 winners only after a last-gasp Warriors attack ran aground on one pass.

Bath have never been convincing winners at home to Scottish sides, edging the Borders 27-23 – in the 1997-98 season that they won the cup – and Edinburgh 17-10, matches both Scottish teams left believing they could have won. But neither of them did and Glasgow believe they now have the arsenal to change that. If other results go their way, they would also qualify for the Amlin Challenge Cup quarter-finals.

Lineen added: “We’re out of the Heineken Cup, but we haven’t given up hope on the Amlin. It’s out of our hands but we have to go down and give it our best shot.”