Glasgow Warriors put 'distractions' to one side and focus on what they can control in South Africa

Scott Cummings believes that Glasgow Warriors can break their miserable recent record away from home during the next fortnight, by sticking to what they are good at against the Sharks in Durban this Saturday and the Lions in Johannesburg seven days later.

Glasgow Warriors' Scott Cummings is tackled by Cardiff's Seb Davies during a United Rugby Championship match between the two teams.

Warriors have not tasted victory in their last eight URC games on the road since beating Connacht back in January, and they have not won in South Africa since getting the better of the Cheetahs back ins September 2018.

It is a run of failures which needs to be broken if Franco Smith’s side are to have any chance of becoming serious contenders at the top end of the URC table. Cummings believes the key to doing that is for the Warriors pack to find a way to recreate the same sort of controlled aggression as they exhibited when running out convincing 35-21 winners over the Bulls at Scotstoun last Saturday night.

“That was a really big win for the team,” said the second-row, who scored the third of Warriors’ five tries in that match, and who is beginning to get back to his best form after an injury-ravaged 2021-22 season.

“We had a pretty clear plan that if we could front up physically and put in a dominant performance then our back play would cause them problems. We managed to do that throughout the game.

“We know that that is the kind of level we need to get to every week. We want to be one of the most dominant packs there is so we are trying to be as aggressive as we can. We know we still have ways to improve as well because we weren't perfect. We conceded tries so we still have a lot to work on. But we are excited with where we are moving towards and it is now time for us to get an away performance like that.

“It is obviously tough going to South Africa. It is hot, humid and long travel. That does play into it, but we don't want to use that as an excuse,” he continued. “If we go out there and play our game and impose our game as we want to then we can come away with results.

“We are just focusing on ourselves, what we can do with our game and how we can stop them. All the other distractions of the travel and the heat we will take as they come and just adapt to it.”

Edinburgh managed a historic win against the Sharks in Durban last March when they were clearly more at ease with the monsoon conditions than their hosts, but Cummings insisted that he and his Glasgow team-mates will not be praying to any rain gods ahead of this weekend.

“We like to play an expansive brand of rugby and that tends to favour drier weather,” he reasoned. “We're not sitting there hoping it rains. We will play in any conditions. We're just excited to go out there, get a good experience in South Africa, see a bit of the country.

“Our away record is not something we are conscious of in the sense that we get nervous or anything,” he concluded. “We still want to play our expansive game, our physical up-front game.

“Franco has used the phrase ‘be brave’ at times. We just want to go out there and play rugby, do what we do. If we try to play another way we're not going to win. We need to make sure we have our identity and keep that no matter whether we are at home or away.”