John Dalziel insists Glasgow Warriors will be fearless against Leinster

Glasgow Warriors’ upturn in form since the start of the year will face its biggest challenge yet when they head to Dublin on Friday night to take on a Leinster outfit who have won all 18 of their matches in any competition this season – but assistant coach John Dalziel says his side have nothing to fear.

Glasgow Warriors assistant coach John Dalziel. Picture: Ross MacDonald/SNS/SRU

While Warriors’ record for the season is ten wins, one draw and seven loses from 18 games, they are unbeaten in 2020 with a record of played five, won four and drawn one. However, those four wins have been against perennial Pro14 strugglers Benetton, Zebre and Dragons, and a Sale Sharks side who were already out of the Champions Cup and had rested a number of their key players.

“They [Leinster] are pretty stingy in terms of points [conceded], so we’ll need to be at our best,” said Dalziel. “But we’re confident and they know we have a game that can hurt them. It will take a huge performance, though.

“We beat them [in Dublin] last year when we had to do a lot of defending,” he added.

“We are renowned for attacking but we know both sides of the ball have to be right and we got that right over there.

“Defence will have to be at the level it has been at in recent weeks and our attack has to be clean.”

Warriors’ patchy start to the season cost them qualification to the knock-out stages of the Champions Cup and left them in the unusual position of playing catch-up in the race to the Pro14 play-offs, but they have now climbed to third in Conference A which means their destiny is back in their own hands.

Scrum-half George Horne and No 8 Matt Fagerson, who each played just over 25 minutes off the bench for Scotland against Italy on Saturday, were back training with Glasgow on Monday morning and are likely to get game time against Leinster.

Huw Jones, George Turner, Kyle Steyn, Ratu Tagive, and Tom Gordon, who are all members of Scotland’s Six Nations squad but have had limited or no game time, are in the same boat.