Revenge on Glasgow’s mind for clash with Leinster

Flanker Rob Harley is training hard with his Glasgow Warriors team-mates for Friday. Picture: Rob Casey/SNS

The three-time Heineken Cup winners are unlikely to be at the apex of their capabilities on Friday night at Scotstoun, having only played two games under new coach Matt O’Connor and drawn one of them, but for aspirational Glasgow they are the yardstick, and three victories out of three really would be a fine start.

Having built a reputation as a credible force in this league over the past two seasons, and opened the new season with home and away victories, the Warriors can now be confident and open about their intentions. Asked yesterday whether revenge was a motivating force this week, Rob Harley even abandoned his media training for a moment to say yes.

“Personally I think it is, yeah. They are a team that we’ve looked up to for what they’ve done in the past couple of seasons, and they won the league last year – that’s what we aim to do. That’s the standard we want to achieve and we have to beat those teams to put ourselves in that position,” said the Scotland flanker, courteously resisting the temptation to say that Glasgow would only be concentrating on themselves.

Losing that second successive semi-final to Brian O’Driscoll and company in May, 17-15, was a genuine sickener for Gregor Townsend’s troops, because they had been above Leinster in the standings for much of the season.

“We had a lot of belief in the squad, we were playing good rugby and we were very hard to beat,” recalled Harley. “Having invested so much in it, it was very difficult to handle that, getting beaten in a close game.

“Now I think it’s a motivation to the squad that we’ve got to the semi-finals two seasons in a row. We want to do better than that and a game at home against the champions is the perfect place to show what we can do as a team.”

The 23-year-old Harley may have let his guard slip on the revenge question but he was sensible enough to state that last Friday’s dramatic and very satisfying win over Ulster in Belfast did not necessarily mean everything in the Dear Green garden is rosy. “Now we’ve got two wins under our belt but I think as a squad we feel we are not playing as well as we could be, and we are using that as motivation to try and push on,” he said. “I think our execution [could be better] at the set-piece, and our speed of ball. If we can increase that incrementally then everything across the whole team gets better.”

Winning with a last-minute try in the backyard of last year’s runners-up must have given everybody a huge lift, though?

“It was great for morale, because we had to do a lot of defending. We came in on Monday and were told that we’d made over 200 tackles,” said Harley. “The effort has been absolutely huge and the squad hasn’t given up but given everything until the very last minute.

“Then James (Eddie) has gone over for a very good try, and it just shows the belief in the team that we were able to soak up all that pressure and get the result.”

Harley admitted he had much admiration for Leinster’s regular PRO12 flanking duo, Shane Jennings and Kevin McLaughlin, but added that their work at the breakdown did not make them stand out in their own XV.

“It’s one of the biggest challenges when you’re playing against Leinster – the back row is terrific at the contact and regularly slows down opposition ball. But I think that’s a strength of their whole team,” he said.

“It’s not so much about nullifying the threat of their back row, but being 100 per cent in every contact because from one to 15, they all challenge the breakdown and fight hard there. That’s something we’ll be looking to do: to clear our breakdown and give ourselves quick ball.”