Confidence raised at Glasgow Warriors as Ollie Smith eyes Challenge Cup victory

Ollie Smith believes that Glasgow’s 45-17 victory over Zebre at the weekend has given them a vital morale boost ahead of Saturday’s visit to Bath in the Challenge Cup – a competition that the Warriors full-back insists his team can win.
Glasgow Warriors celebrate their victory over Zebre. Pic: Luca Sighinolfi/INPHO/ShutterstockGlasgow Warriors celebrate their victory over Zebre. Pic: Luca Sighinolfi/INPHO/Shutterstock
Glasgow Warriors celebrate their victory over Zebre. Pic: Luca Sighinolfi/INPHO/Shutterstock

Smith is well aware that the English Premiership club are likely to constitute a tougher challenge than the Italians were able to muster in Parma. But, after playing his part in Glasgow’s first away win in any competition since April – and their first URC victory on the road since January – he is confident his team are heading in the right direction.

The 22-year-old admitted that he would rather be playing in the Champions Cup, not the Challenge Cup, but he insisted the Warriors would treat their second-tier European ties just as seriously. “We’re approaching it as if we were playing in the Champions Cup - just as we do with the URC,” he said. “We speak about trying to reach the finals of both competitions.

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“There’s still good competition in the Challenge Cup, so we know it’s not going to be easy. But we’re going to aim to win it, and hopefully we can do that and that starts this week.

“Bath are a strong outfit, so we’ll have to be firing all across the park. We’ve got that first away win now and we’ll look to get some momentum rolling. We know we can perform as well away from home as we do at home, so we have to look to crack on.”

It took a while for Glasgow to ‘crack on’ at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi two days ago against opponents who had lost all eight of their previous games in this season’s URC. They only took the lead on the stroke of half-time, with a George Horne penalty nudging them 10-7 ahead, but they dominated the second half, adding five tries to the one they had managed in the first 40.

The touchdowns came from Sintu Manjezi, Sebastian Cancelliere, Stafford McDowall, Domingo Miotti and Johnny Matthews with two. Man-of-the-match Horne gave a kicking masterclass, converting all six of his team’s tries in addition to that first-half penalty.

“We spoke a lot about having to earn the right to score points,” Smith added. “No matter how long that took, we would have to stay in the fight.

“Zebre threw a lot at us and spent a lot of the first half in our 22 but we stayed in there with good defence. We said we were going to have pride in our defence and that’s what we did.

“At half-time we spoke about being relentless in the second half - and I thought we were.”

Glasgow moved up to eighth in the 16-team league as a result of the win, having won four and lost four of their eight matches. But Smith is loath to settle for mid-table respectability, and is adamant that they can keep climbing towards the play-off places.

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“We have five games in December and we want to get maximum points from each one if we can. That’s always the aim.

“We need to right some wrongs and that the only way to do that is by taking our home form into all our away games. That’s going to be massive if we’re pushing for play-offs and that top-four spot that we feel we deserve.”