Horrible manner of loss to Leinster will haunt Glasgow over summer
Glasgow's URC title defence was always likely to come to a shuddering halt at a venue where no Scottish side — club or international — has won in the 15 years since it became the Aviva Stadium.
But for the crown to be ripped from their heads in such unseemly fashion was an experience that will haunt Franco Smith's players over what now promises to be a long and regret-filled summer. The Warriors were battered; literally, figuratively and emotionally. Pummelled up front and with little else to commend them elsewhere across the field, for the most part the Scots were every bit as bad as had been the case in their 52-0 Champions Cup defeat on the same pitch eight weeks ago. Two tries in the last eight minutes added some sheen to the scoreline, but cannot paper over any cracks in this wobbly Warriors edifice.
Leinster broke through seemingly at will, in between dismantling the Glasgow scrum and otherwise dominating the physical stakes to an almost embarrassing degree. Ryan Baird was named man of the match but the award could easily have gone to about ten other boys in blue.
Smith was putting a brave face on it at the finish, urging us to see the bigger picture of a campaign in which a ludicrous quantity of big-name injuries had opened up opportunities for new faces to shine. 'I don't want to make excuses because I definitely felt the team that we named tonight could have won the game,' the South African said. 'So, yes, it would have been good to have had some of those boys back, but I backed the team that we picked. I backed the depth and the growth of the club that we've seen, with more players becoming eligible for Scotland and putting their hands up to play at this level this whole season.
'Numerous people have grown. That is the progression. There are six or seven boys who played in last year's final who weren't available here, that's true, but I'm more proud of the evolution and the growth. So there is a positive to be taken from this. [Leinster are] still a world-class team, nothing's changed. So if we were going to lose the URC Championship title, I'd rather it was against them than anybody else. That said, we're a proud team. I thought we gave it everything. I see this holistically, not just in terms of this game. We defended our title bravely but today we fell short.'
On an afternoon when the Dublin weather ran through all the seasons, torrential rain showers being broken up by spells of sunshine then lashings of hail, the game itself was disappointingly one-note. A no-contest that had promised so much more, not least because a still underpowered Glasgow were blessed with several of the key cattle who had missed the European mauling.
If the first half of that match had been a real shock-and-awe job from Leinster, the opening period here was much more of an ongoing asphyxiation as the hosts seized control quite literally from kick-off and only tightened their grip thereafter.
Bar the exquisite breakaway which led to the George Horne try, Glasgow had so little territory that they were in danger of being declared another San Marino. For almost the entirety of those initial 40 minutes, they found themselves hopelessly pinned by a combination of Leinster excellence and their own inadequacies.
The Warriors scrum was a walking — or, rather, back-pedalling — disaster. The recent loss of Zander Fagerson has been grievous, and here Fin Richardson fared exactly as you might expect a club's fifth-choice tight-head prop to when up against a British & Irish Lion in Andrew Porter.
All over the park, and in pretty much every phase of the game, Glasgow had no answer to Leinster's power plays, and they further undermined their efforts by trying to force things when they did enjoy some ball in the middle third.
Smith's men were error-strewn and ill-disciplined, with even such consistently refined performers as Horne, Sione Tuipulotu and Henco Venter guilty of their own costly imprecisions. A 20-point interval deficit might have been so much bigger: Sam Prendergast had missed three of his four conversion attempts while Leinster had also seen two tries disallowed. Glasgow's way back was already not so much uphill as non-existent.
Smith tried shuffling his pack, making six substitutions between the 40th and 51st minutes. These alterations included an all-new front row and Stafford McDowall replacing Adam Hastings so that Tom Jordan could move to fly half and Tuipulotu to inside centre, but with Glasgow still living off painfully pathetic possession rations, everything and nothing changed.
There was also no encouragement for the visitors to draw from some of the figures making their way off the Leinster bench: the likes of RG Snyman, Rabah Slimani, Ronan Kelleher and Max Deegan do not tend to weaken a side, never mind one which has already established such a degree of physical dominance.
Truth be told, Leo Cullen's men were bossing it in every facet: the technical, the tactical, the aerial, even the attitudinal. When Jamie Dobie crossed to reduce the arrears to 25 points, there was barely a flicker of emotion from anyone concerned. This was Dobie's 24th birthday, but he, like everyone else of a Warriors persuasion, will remember it not for the blowing out of candles but the snuffing out of a dream.
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