Never-say-die Glasgow fight back for dramatic draw with Edinburgh

Both Michael Bradley, the Edinburgh coach, and his Glasgow counterpart Sean Lineen admitted afterwards that they were pleased to take two points from a game that for long periods looked to be in the bag for Edinburgh, the league’s top-scoring winger Tim Visser having restored the hosts’ ten-point lead in the second half with two controversial tries, but the spirit Glasgow have built up on a run of 11 games now with just one defeat roaring late on in the capital to snatch a draw.

Bradley said: “You have to hand it to Glasgow. They are a difficult side to break down. The two tries we got in the second half – the TMO was great – were well-worked, but Glasgow we knew would come back at us and we weren’t able to control the last 20 minutes, where they were very dominant and kept us under a lot of pressure.

“With a couple of minutes to go it was looking difficult for us and they had two kicks to win it, so at 20 minutes out I was delighted with a potential win and two minutes to go I was delighted to get a draw.

“Glasgow are nine points ahead of us in this league and deservedly so because they are playing a brand of rugby that keeps pressure on you, and they weren’t going to give up easily.”

Bradley praised the size of the 13, 240 crowd, the biggest for a Scottish pro game outside the 17,000 at the Celtic Cup Final at Murrayfield between Edinburgh and Ulster, as further evidence of the feelgood factor growing around the Scottish game. It created a fantastic Boxing Day atmosphere and Lineen urged the Warriors contingent to turn out in force at the near 9000capacity Firhill for the rematch on 1 January to give their side the chance to claim victory on home soil.

As to whether he felt David Lemi should have been awarded a try in the first half, and Visser’s tries were good and deserved to stand – the winger looked to lose the ball in the act of grounding the first and then brush the touchline for the second – Lineen said: “I’ll need to have another look at it because I think I had my head in my hands.

“Whether the Lemi one was 50/50 I don’t know. Visser did a lot of hard work but we could have stopped him a lot earlier and so that’s our fault. One of them appeared as if he had dropped it over the line – I think he said that to one of our players – but we should have stopped him.

“This is a tough place to come and win and that’s us gone ten games out of 11 without losing, and we’ve got tremendous spirit but we’re soaking up so much in defence and then when we get into the ‘green zone’ we’re slowing our own ball down when it should be action stations.

“It’s mixed emotions. We’ll take the two points and it’s going to be another hell of a tough game at Firhill next week. We need a full house there and we know we can’t start like that again or we’ll not do well.”

As for whether he was sure he had scored, Visser admitted: “I wasn’t convinced. I’ve had a few lately not going my way so I was delighted they finally did. It took a bit long for my liking, but delighted to get them.

“But the way the boys were in the changing room it felt like a loss. I hate draws anyway but in front of your home crowd we wanted to get a win. But we take what we can and we’ll take the two points. It makes the return leg at Firhill a bit more interesting.”

Ruaridh Jackson, whose try claimed the draw at the death, admitted there was a similar feeling of dejection in the Warriors camp. “The way things were going in the last ten minutes we were on the up and had more pressure on them. I thought we should have won it in the end, but we probably gave them too big a head-start. But two points away from home is decent. We’ve come here before and had a bit of a hiding, and it’s going to be very close next week as well.”