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Glasgow dig deep to battle from behind to secure victory at Ospreys

By PA
Glasgow Warriors head coach Franco Smith before the United Rugby Championship match between Leinster and Glasgow Warriors at RDS Arena in Dublin. (Photo By Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

An impressive comeback from Glasgow Warriors saw them overturn a 10-0 deficit to win a hard-fought BKT United Rugby Championship encounter 31-23 in Swansea.

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Ospreys had no answer to Glasgow’s formidable line-out drive from which they scored all four of their tries.

Johnny Matthews scored two of them with Sione Vailanu and Allan Dell also on the try-scoring sheet. Duncan Weir converted all four and added a penalty.

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Lions scrums coach Julian Redelinghuys talking about South African team and their physicality

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Lions scrums coach Julian Redelinghuys talking about South African team and their physicality

Keiran Williams and Reuben Morgan-Williams scored Ospreys’ tries with Jack Walsh kicking three penalties and two conversions.

Ospreys made the better start to take a fifth-minute lead. Glasgow conceded two penalties in quick succession to give the hosts an attacking platform with Williams on hand to drive over from close range.

Ospreys soon came close to scoring a second when Mat Protheroe took advantage of inaccurate handling from the Scots to kick ahead. The wing looked a likely scorer but his second kick forward resulted in the ball running dead before he could ground it.

Williams’ converted try was the only score of a competitive first quarter with stubborn defence from the Welsh Region and poor handling from Glasgow preventing the visitors from drawing level.

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Ospreys suffered an injury blow when try-scorer Williams was forced to leave the field to fail an HIA with Weir yellow carded for the high challenge.

Walsh kicked the resulting penalty with George North introduced to replace Williams.

Weir returned from the sin-bin in time to see his side come onto the scoreboard with Matthews crashing over from a line-out drive. Weir’s conversion left Glasgow 10-7 adrift at the interval.

Four minutes after the restart, Matthews repeated the dose to put the visitors in front for the first time.

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Glasgow’s pack became increasingly dominant and their line-out drive proved unstoppable with Vailanu crashing over for their third try.

A second penalty from Walsh kept Ospreys in contention before they scored the best try of the night. Skilful passing created space for Luke Morgan to make ground before he kicked ahead with Morgan-Williams winning the race to touchdown.

Walsh converted and succeeded with his third penalty but Weir first kicked a penalty before Dell scored their bonus-point try after Justin Tipuric was yellow carded.

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Tom 1 hour ago
England player ratings vs South Africa | 2024 Autumn Nations Series

That 2019 performance was literally the peak in attacking rugby under Eddie. If you thought that was underwhelming, the rest of it was garbage.


I totally get what you're saying and England don't need or have any God given right to the best coaches in the world... But I actually think the coaches we do have are quite poor and for the richest union in the world, that's not good enough. 


England are competitive for sure but with the talent pool up here and the funds available, we should be in the top 3. At the very least we should be winning six nations titles on a semi-regular basis. If Ireland can, England definitely should.


England's attack coach (Richard Wigglesworth) is Borthwick's mate from his playing days at Saracens, who he brought to Leicester with him when he became coach. Wigglesworth was a 9 who had no running or passing game, but was the best box kicker in the business. He has no credentials to be an attack coach and I've seen nothing to prove otherwise. Aside from Marcus Smith’s individual brilliance, our collective attack has looked very uninspiring.

 

England's defence coach (Joe El-Abd) is Borthwick's housemate from uni, who has never been employed as a defence coach before. He's doing the job part time while he's still the head coach of a team in the second division of French rugby who have an awful defensive record. England's defence has gone from being brutally efficient under Felix Jones to as leaky as a colander almost overnight.


If Borthwick brings in a new attack and defence coach then I'll absolutely get behind him but his current coaches seem to be the product of nepotism. He's brought in people he's comfortable with because he lacks confidence as an international head coach and they aren't good enough for international rugby.


England are competitive because they do some things really well, mostly they front up physically, make a lot of big hits, have a solid kicking game, a good lineout, good maul, Marcus Smith and some solid forwards. A lot of what we do well I would ascribe to Borthwick personally. I don't think he's a bad coach, I think he lacks imagination and is overly risk averse. He needs coaches who will bring a point of difference.


I guess my point is, yes England are competitive, but we’re not aiming for competitive and I honestly don't believe this coaching setup has what it takes to make us any better than competitive.


On the plus side it looks like we have an amazing crop of young players coming through. Some of them who won the u20 world cup played for England A against Australia A on the weekend and looked incredible... Check out the highlights on youtube.

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