RP12 Semi-Final 1; Glasgow vs Munster, 16 May

First topic message reminder :

Glasgow Warriors v Munster Rugby

Friday 16 May 2014, KO: 19:35
Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow

Live on BBC ALBA/TG4/SC4

Referee: Marius Mitrea (FIR, 29th competition game)
Assistant Referees: Giuseppe Vivarini, Stefano Penne (both FIR)
Citing Commissioner: Dennis Jones (WRU)
TMO: Carlo Damasco (FIR)

A. Teams:

I. Glasgow

15. Peter Murchie
14. Sean Maitland
13. Mark Bennett
12. Alex Dunbar
11. Tommy Seymour
10. Finn Russell
9. Chris Cusiter

1. Ryan Grant
2. Dougie Hall
3. Jon Welsh
4. Jonny Gray
5. Al Kellock (Captain)
6. Rob Harley
7. Chris Fusaro
8. Josh Strauss

16. Pat MacArthur
17. Gordon Reid
18. Geoff Cross
19. Tim Swinson
20. Leone Nakarawa
21. Niko Matawalu
22. Ruaridh Jackson
23. Sean Lamont

II. Munster

Felix Jones, Keith Earls, Casey Laulala, James Downey, Simon Zebo; Ian Keatley, Conor Murray; Dave Kilcoyne, Damien Varley - Capt, BJ Botha; Dave Foley, Paul O'Connell; CJ Stander, Sean Dougall, James Coughlan.

Replacements: Quentin MacDonald, James Cronin, John Ryan, Donncha O'Callaghan, Paddy Butler, Duncan Williams, JJ Hanrahan, Andrew Conway.

B. Previous Championships

I. Glasgow

None

Playoff Record - Played 3, Lost 3:
2010 Swansea: lost to Ospreys 5-20
2012 RDS: lost to Leinster 15-19.
2013 RDS: lost to Leinster 15-17.

II. Munster

Three (2002-2003; 2008-2009; 2010-2011)

Playoff Record - Played 3, Won 1, Lost 2:
2010 RDS: lost to Leinster 6-16.
2011 Thomond Park: beat Ospreys 18-11.
2012 Swansea: lost to Ospreys 10-45.

C. Form - head to head:

23 Played 23
8 Wins 14
14 Losses 8
1 Draws 1
44 Tries 57
31 Conversions 41
59 Penalties 51
1 Drop Goals 1
462 Points 523
26 Avg. Age 26

D. Form - this season & last:

Sat 1 December 2012, 19:45
Munster Rugby 31 - 3 Glasgow Warriors
Thomond Park

Fri 29 March 2013, 20:05
Glasgow Warriors 51 - 24 Munster Rugby
Scotstoun

Fri 25 October 2013, 19:35
Glasgow Warriors 6 - 13 Munster Rugby
Scotstoun

Sat 12 April 2014, 18:30
Munster Rugby 5 - 22 Glasgow Warriors
Thomond Park

ME-109 wrote:er...where's Strauss the warriors site has him at 8?

Well spotted buddy! Now corrected.   

I was kind of hoping he was out, basically beat us (up) single handed in Thomond a few weeks back.

Just kind of curious as to why he playing at 8? Seems much more effective at 6.

What's the story with Tommy O'Donnell?

No idea...out of favour? Maybe going for a more physical back row with Butler on the bench...

ME-109 wrote:I was kind of hoping he was out, basically beat us (up) single handed in Thomond a few weeks back.

Just kind of curious as to why he playing at 8? Seems much more effective at 6.

I prefer him at 6 as well. Ryan Wilson who is our other 8 is out injured, had he been fit I would think Strauss would have been at 6.

I think Strauss is equally destructive at 6 or 8 so it should come down to who is better between Harley and Wilson.
Harley wins that hands down. Such a team player rather than a kebab shop tough guy

Wow, didn't expect Hogg to be completely dropped.

Seems insane he's not involved at all considering he's the most versatile player in the squad and did score two tries last week.

Is Townsend laying down a marker?

Weegie Wizard wrote:I think Strauss is equally destructive at 6 or 8 so it should come down to who is better between Harley and Wilson.
Harley wins that hands down. Such a team player rather than a kebab shop tough guy

+1   

Strauss operates in effectively the same way whether at 6 or 8 - he carries just as much ball wherever he is. Harley is in primarily for his defensive skills, which are excellent. As the Wizard states, it really would be a straight fight between Harley and Wilson, and Harley is the better player.

Yep, I reckon Hoggy's omission will be the big talking point, but actually for me this is more of a nod to Peter Murchie for a terrific season in which he's been Mr Reliably Consistent.

The inclusion of Rhubarb on the bench ahead of Meatball is also a bit of an eyebrow-raiser for me, what with the former not having his contract renewed and the latter supposedly Scotland first choice 10

Shame that Moray Low has probably played his last game for the Warriors too before heading to the

Very surprised that Hogg isn't at least on the bench. You'd think he's a better game changer than Sean Lamont, so something has clearly gone wrong between Toonie and Hogg.

funnyExiledScot wrote:Very surprised that Hogg isn't at least on the bench. You'd think he's a better game changer than Sean Lamont, so something has clearly gone wrong between Toonie and Hogg.

Bit of a leap there?

Hogg went off injured in the last game, did he not?

He did, but is not listed as injured. I suppose his training could've been limited this week, even if he is actually fit now. Big call, for sure

Any possibility there is a whole load of in fighting going on and the wheels will come off?

There's a possibility. Just like there's a possibility that I'm actually Gregor Townsend incognito, and that I've been drawing all my coaching advice and squad picks from 606v2.

Ah well...we will just have to give it a shot and enjoy the craic then.

ME-109 wrote:Any possibility there is a whole load of in fighting going on and the wheels will come off?

Defo, DOD - I suspect a coup d'etat is in mid throws as we type   

AsLongAsBut100ofUs wrote:

ME-109 wrote:Any possibility there is a whole load of in fighting going on and the wheels will come off?

Defo, DOD - I suspect a coup d'etat is in mid throws as we type   

All nonsense of course! Hoggy would love to be playing he just has a dinner in Belfast he can't get out of   

Lamont's inclusion over Hogg for the last bench spot makes perfect sense - with the 1st XV as it is, you need someone to cover centre and wing in reserve, not centre and fullback.

Is Lamont also not more of a conservative pick to balance the mental-ness of Niko and Nakarawa?

Apparently there are only a few hundred tickets left for tomorrows game. So get in there quick if you haven't done so already

Dorothy_Mantooth wrote:

ME-109 wrote:I was kind of hoping he was out, basically beat us (up) single handed in Thomond a few weeks back.

Just kind of curious as to why he playing at 8? Seems much more effective at 6.

I prefer him at 6 as well.  Ryan Wilson who is our other 8 is out injured, had he been fit I would think Strauss would have been at 6.

Asbo, pay attention to these two intelligent and perspicacious people. I won't tell you again. Strauss is a six, which is bad news for Kellybrows6.

Toonie has done it again; Kellock in, Hoggthetry out.

I think it's a brilliant team.   
Murchie deserves to play based on his form this season.
Kellock deserves to play based on being Al Kellock, blessed be he of that name.
Russell-Dunbar-   Now there's a holy trinity.
The pack wont get bullied and we have two loads if Fijian mentalness to come on.  
WE ARE GLASGOW WE FEAR NO-ONE

jimbopip wrote:

Dorothy_Mantooth wrote:

ME-109 wrote:I was kind of hoping he was out, basically beat us (up) single handed in Thomond a few weeks back.

Just kind of curious as to why he playing at 8? Seems much more effective at 6.

I prefer him at 6 as well.  Ryan Wilson who is our other 8 is out injured, had he been fit I would think Strauss would have been at 6.

Asbo, pay attention to these two intelligent and perspicacious people. I won't tell you again. Strauss is a six, which is bad news for Kellybrows6.

Sadly, none of them are as good a blindside as the Jinja Ninja tho - I shall fill you in on the details later

Munster: Felix Jones, Keith Earls, Casey Laulala, James Downey, Simon Zebo; Ian Keatley, Conor Murray; Dave Kilcoyne, Damien Varley - Capt, BJ Botha; Dave Foley, Paul O'Connell; CJ Stander, Sean Dougall, James Coughlan.

Replacements: Quentin MacDonald, James Cronin, John Ryan, Donncha O'Callaghan, Paddy Butler, Duncan Williams, JJ Hanrahan, Andrew Conway.

Both Swinson and Naka on the bench. That's why he can afford to start Kellock. With him, Gray and Harley, that's as solid a line-out as any side in the competition could have.

Hogg. I mean, who the hell knows what's going on there.

Delighted to see Finn at 10. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. I presume that the fear of getting Tweets from FES telling him that he is overrated and grossly Welsh in his overconfidence will be enough to spur him onto a great performance.

Interesting that Hornee Furraaa Linnneeeeee doesn't feature either - presumably still lacking match fitness?

From the Belshaft Torygraph:

Townsend defends shock selection

Glasgow Warriors head coach Gregor Townsend has made 11 changes to his side ahead of Friday night's clash with Munster. Glasgow head coach Gregor Townsend insists he is not gambling with the Warriors' RaboDirect Pro12 prospects by dropping Scotland internationals Stuart Hogg and Duncan Weir.

The Scotstoun side host their first ever semi-final clash on Friday night, with Irish big guns Munster due in town.

Townsend's side have won all of their last eight games and take on the Heineken Cup semi-finalists fresh from thrashing Zebre 54-0 last week.

But the Glasgow boss has sprung a surprise by dropping 11 of the side which walloped the hapless Italian outfit - including Scotland RBS Six Nations campaigners Hogg and Weir, who fail to even make the substitutes' bench.

Back issues which have plagued full-back Hogg recently have cost him his spot but erratic form is behind Weir's loss of the number 10 jersey.

In their place come inexpierienced duo Peter Murchie and Finn Russell but Townsend is happy with his starting XV.

He said: "We have used 36 players over the last three games and the players have responded really well. Most of them have grabbed their opportunities to put themselves up for selection for this game.

"Our last two performances have been excellent and I know that no matter what the combinations we put out on Friday, we would have a strong side.

"Leaving out some of the guys we have is not a gamble. It was a difficult decision but I'm happy with the team we are putting out.

"I've watched them in training this week and they look excellent. I believe this is the right squad to face Munster.

"But the other thing to look at is that we have got an excellent bench this weekend, so if we have to change anything for tactics or injuries, we know we have players coming on who are as good as the guy they are replacing."

Glasgow have reached the last four of the former Celtic League on three previous occasions but this is the first time they have won the right to host the clash.

And the enormity of the game - expected to be played out in front of a record 10,000 crowd - is not lost on the head coach.

"This is the biggest game in the club's history," declared Townsend. "It's the first time we have had a home semi-final and we're now looking for the biggest crowd in the club's history.

Hogg has back issues? Did they miss the suffix "chat" from that part?   

Peter Murchie is not inexperienced - he's probably played more Rabo games than Hogg.

The more I read press from other countries, the more I realize that by far the majority of journos out there genuinely know absolutely nothing about Glasgow whatsoever. The better journalists just fake it but some of the stuff that I've read has been nothing short of embarrassing. It must be confounding for them - a team greater than the sum of its parts with players that would run through walls for each other. Sounds like Munster actually.

I will try and find the piece in the Irish Times that said even if Glasgow beats Munster, Munster are still a better team. Amazing. As though over an entire season you can just be lucky or your opponents have a collective brainfart 22 times in succession.

Aye George - collective noun for a group of journos - a w*nk of journos !

To be fair George, Glasgows lack of progress in the Heineken Cup undermines them in the eyes of many. I know what a fine team they are, but they need to be hitting the knockout stages of Europe on a regular basis to get the more widespread respect they deserve.

Sounds like we need to win this league more than any of the other teams , then.

I've got no problems with having to earn respect.

Someone in the Scotsman once wrote a piece in the mid-2000s which said pro players from other nations really liked their Scottish colleagues as people and respected them as professionals but simply didn't regard them as winners. That really got to me, because it rang far too true. Ryan Grant was right - we really need to win this.

Don't expect respect to immediately follow from the begrudgers. For instance, there'd be a lot in Munster who would see them as having had a better season than you even if you wallop them by 40 points tomorrow because they got to a European Cup semi-final and Glasgow went out at the group stages.

I think thats a ridiculous point of view myself. A trophy is a trophy and Glasgow would deserve all the plaudits ahead of any of the provinces if they go and win it. But there's plenty of people who have taken Munster/Leinsters European success for granted, in the sense that it is used as the benchmark to judge all other teams by. Pro12 is sort of the ugly sister. There won't be all that much praise in the Irish media for Munster/Leinster if they win it. Probably if they win it the usual post-mortems will follow.

I'll be bleeding glad of a Pro12 win. Ulster and Glasgow are in the same boat.

its wont be the ugly sister anymore as you need to do well to make the hk cup mk.2 whatever its called...... 

Well thats the thing, they've been winning the Pro12 without ever really committing fully to it because they've been head and shoulders above the other teams. Certainly they would have qualified every year. It's up to teams like Glasgow to change the perception of the league as a stroll.

Nobody in Munster is going to compare with Glasgow if we lose and say we are better than them Notch....I dont thinks thats a good way of putting it....the general view is that last year we made one Semi in the HC, this year we are making both the HC and Pro12 semi so slight improvement but not winning it would be seen as not a good season.

Where the Munsterfans will be comparing is with Ulster/Leinster. If we win we have a good case to argue as being the primary province, if either Ulster/Leinster win it then we dont...simples.

Aye but Mr 109 you could give us this one wee thing and we can kick on from there. No ...... ok we will take it anyway ! Yessssss   

Glasgow are always peaking around March-April, have they been in the QF of the HEC they would have absolutely no one to fear.

Not a WUM in the slightest but I am genuinely fascinated by the fans of each of Ulster, Leinster and Munster - they each seem to be genuinely confident that their team is going to win the league. Borne of being used to winning and presumably on the back of a 6N winning national team.

I honestly think it's brilliant. The reason that Glasgow may advance this time is because I think that we've got it out of our system now to question whether we deserve to be there. We keep on making the playoffs. So of course we deserve to be there.

Only recently has supporting one of the two Scots teams been regarded as anything other than a exercise in masochist theatre. And following Edinburgh is still like that.

Not sure many Munster fans are genuinely confident....always hopeful, possibly expect a decent performance...maybe we can sneak it....but not particularly confident...consensus seems to think its Glasgows to lose.

Thing is to come top of a league you have to be very consistent - which Leinster and Glasgow had been, thereabouts, this year. With a playoff structure included you just have to be a good team that's quite consistent.

To win the HC you have to beat your opposition in intense winner-takes-all matches right from game one. Something Scottish teams have traditionally not been good at since professionalism with the sole exception in the entire history of Scottish professionalism being Edinburgh a couple of years ago - but then again it was a relatively lucky run and anyone is correct twice a day (that's not a dig at Edinburgh but still Scotland at large!)

Will Scottish teams get better at the more intense battles? Time will tell. Less than 24 hours, in fact...

So essentially this is possibly the most important game I've witnessed as a Scot since 1999, perhaps Argentina QF 2007 aside, which frankly we bottled.

Also without disrespecting Edinburgh they did have a relatively smooth run through the competition with the exception of Toulouse, which was an incredible performance. It also came at the perfect moment with their starting team having experienced players like Ford, Jacobsen, Rennie, Talai, Visser, Blair and Laidlaw on top form mixed in with the youthful exuberance of Scott, Jones, Denton and Gilchrist. It was a far better team than we ever gave it credit for however there was still an enormous lack of depth as we saw from the Pro12 performance which was exposed when the first choice got injured, left, aged or simply lost form coupled with the failure to replace the starters who left with players of equal ability. Someone thought the appropriate replacement for British and Irish Lion, Scottish and Edinburgh, world player of the year nominee and all round Rugby legend Mike Blair was Richie Rees, Cardiff Blues back-up.

As an Edinburgh season ticket holder I'm bandwagoning the game tomorrow and hope that a Scots team can finally take the next step.

George Carlin wrote:Not a WUM in the slightest but I am genuinely fascinated by the fans of each of Ulster, Leinster and Munster - they each seem to be genuinely confident that their team is going to win the league. Borne of being used to winning and presumably on the back of a 6N winning national team.

I honestly think it's brilliant. The reason that Glasgow may advance this time is because I think that we've got it out of our system now to question whether we deserve to be there. We keep on making the playoffs. So of course we deserve to be there.

Only recently has supporting one of the two Scots teams been regarded as anything other than a exercise in masochist theatre. And following Edinburgh is still like that.

I'm very confident that we can win the league, yeah. We've made two finals in the last two years only to come up against the best team in Europe. We have them again but without Schmidt and Sexton they are a different beast. I've been frustrated at how badly we've underachieved in the league this season but I have total confidence we have what it takes to win this thing now. No-one has ever won the competition from 4th place but I 100% believe we could be the first.

Especially if Glasgow have to take a Final to Ravenhill  

But if we stumble I hope Glasgow win it. I always support the other provinces but their trophy cabinets are groaning under the weight of their prizes over the last 10 years. Glasgow are, in a sense, the underdogs (although they are surely favourites tomorrow night)

VinceWLB wrote:Glasgow are always peaking around March-April, have they been in the QF of the HEC they would have absolutely no one to fear.

Thats the thing, they haven't hit their stride early enough to make an impact in Europe.

They're gonna win this Pro12 sooner or later. Dunno if it will be this year but they have the culture right, and the depth and the talent throughout the team.

I think it's fair to say both Glasgow's current form and their poor HK campaign are down to the same thing - Toonie's rotation policy.

It is paying dividends now, but I just think he over rotated earlier in the season - rotating both front and back rows week in week out - meaning there wasn't a settled side for the HK.

The worst results were losing home and away to the Blues, who thoroughly deserved both victories. Think its fair to say if those games happened recently Glasgow would have won both.

Hell Edinburgh were even the better team in the first 1872 leg but Glasgow managed to grind out the win!

I just hope we win domestically and make a large impression on Europe soon enough that our players have an incentive stay rather than go for large pay packets at mid and lower table English and French sides. We have to try to build an Irish Province like culture at Glasgow rather than keep the development side view. In essence the aim should be seen as the fifth province (not in stature just numerically) and be competing at the same levels at the Big Irish three, we have risen a level above Edinburgh and the Welsh and we need to start operating as such.