Dave Rennie rues missed bonus point opportunity

Pity the poor Glasgow fans who had seats at the front of Scotstoun's stands because the rain was lashing in sideways. The conditions made catching or passing a rugby ball a high-risk venture.

Glasgow Warriors' head coach Dave Rennie. Pic: SNS/Bill Murray

The conditions inevitably affected the game more than any player managed. Glasgow failed to secure the winning bonus point although they can at least reflect on the fact that pool rivals Saracens also missed out in Cardiff.

Glasgow stay in second place with 14 points and coach Dave Rennie seems confident that another four or five from the final two pool matches should see them into the quarters for only the second time in their history.

“We’ll know more at the end of this week and at the end of round five I guess but obviously if we can knock Cardiff over we’ll go to 18 (points) and if we can get a bonus 19 and that will be pretty close I’d imagine.”

Rennie admitted that from the relative dry and warmth of the Scotstoun coaching box he had been a little disappointed at the number of errors made on the pitch.

The lost bonus point rankled with the Kiwi but he was putting a positive spin on the outcome of the match which Glasgow could have lost had Lyon taken all their chances.

“The fact that we started so well and got a couple of tries in the first 20 obviously gave us a glimmer of hope [for a bonus point],” said the coach, pictured.

“We just didn’t control the game in the last part of the first half. We just needed to keep playing territory and try and force some errors.

“But we made a few errors ourselves and ended up playing without the ball for the last quarter of an hour of that first half.

“It was tough conditions, both sides made a lot of errors. We should probably have scored when going around the edge and going wide in these conditions probably wasn’t the best option.”

With the twin 1872 Cup matches against Edinburgh coming up fast, Glasgow have a crisis at hooker. Having lost Fraser Brown last weekend, his replacement George Turner was carted off the field at the end of the first half with an ankle injury and a potential concussion.

Rennie has options but not too many. Kevin Bryce flits between prop and hooker but he is concentrating on the latter at the moment, Grant Stewart played pretty well yesterday in the loose although Glasgow’s set piece wasn’t too clever.

“The scrums were really disappointing,” said Rennie. “We expected to dominate.”

But overall the Kiwi was in positive mode and Glasgow will still expect to feature in the knock-out stages.

“Look, we’re happy, we’ve put ourselves in a good spot,” said Rennie looking forward to the next European opponents. “Our destiny is in our own hands and we are looking forward to Cardiff.”