Henry Pyrgos: Pack claimed victory for Glasgow

Steam comes off a broken scrum during yesterdays clash between Glasgow and the Dragons at Scotstoun. Picture: SNS

Tight-head prop Jon Welsh claimed the man-of-the-match accolade in his first start of the season following neck and shoulder surgery, after a hugely impressive set-piece effort.

While the key moment of a turgid Pro12 encounter came when Glasgow forced a penalty try after a five- metre scrum five minutes after the break, putting the Scotstoun men in the lead, the pack refused to yield.

Pyrgos, who helped inject much-needed menace into the Warriors’ backline after his second-half introduction for Niko Matawalu, said: “The forwards put in a big shift and clearly the scrum went very well and we got the penalty try, which was vital, at a very good time.

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“So the pack really dug it out for us and hopefully that bodes well for this weekend coming and the trip to Toulouse. It was a very hard-fought win but one we are happy to take. Maybe we can’t be happy with our execution in a lot of respects but credit to the Dragons, they made life very difficult for us.

“Obviously we try and play at a high tempo and stress the opposition defence as much as we can with our off-loading game, but conditions were tough and we just weren’t able to get that going. But we adapted after the break, put the ball long and behind them and it became a territory game, the main thing is we managed to close it out.

“Now we have a great platform going forward to Toulouse and we are back up to third place and we will have more of our Scotland contingent back. So the competition for places in training this week is going to be phenomenal.”

Glasgow head-coach Gregor Townsend said: “We said before the game the Dragons’ backs were against the wall and we knew it would be tough after they played really well against Munster in the first-half last week. In the end we had to put in a huge defensive effort to keep them out and probably, in the nature of the game, there is relief we managed to do that.”

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