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Sione Tuipulotu says Glasgow aren't getting ahead of themselves

By PA
Scenes from an at times tense game in Scotstoun - PA

Glasgow centre Sione Tuipulotu had his feet firmly on the ground after helping Warriors reach their first European semi-final.

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Franco Smith’s side beat the Lions 31-21 at Scotstoun on Saturday night to set up a Challenge Cup semi-final meeting with Scarlets in the final weekend of April.

Tries from Jack Dempsey, Jamie Dobie, Zander Fagerson and Tom Jordan plus 11 points from the boot of George Horne secured a trip to Wales.

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Warriors had to withstand some sustained pressure and did enough to hold out with the help of a player-of-the-match display from Rory Darge.

But Tuipulotu feels they will need to be better to go even further in the tournament.

“The key thing for me is to keep a level head,” the Scotland international said on a club video.

“They pushed back a little bit in the second half like we knew they would. For us it was about limiting their opportunities and taking away some of their strengths.

“I thought we did that well in periods but we need an 80-minute performance moving into the semi-final and into the final.

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“I’m just relieved we got it done. We made it a little bit hard for ourselves at the end there but I was happy with out first-half defensive performance and then after that we did well to hold on.”

The foundations of the triumph were built in the opening quarter.

“We started really well,” Tuipulotu said. “The forwards really stepped up in terms of when they were in our 22 and had a lot of the ball. The guys really stood up in the physical task and won key turnovers for us.

“In attack we also started well and got off to a nice 14-point lead for us.”

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J
JW 19 minutes ago
How law changes are speeding up the game - but the scrum lags behind

Very good, now we are getting somewhere (though you still didn't answer the question but as you're a South African I think we can all assume what the answer would be if you did lol)! Now let me ask you another question, and once you've answered that to yourself, you can ask yourself a followup question, to witch I'm intrigued to know the answer.


Well maybe more than a couple of questions, just to be clear. What exactly did this penalty stop you from doing the the first time that you want to try again? What was this offence that stopped you doing it? Then ask yourself how often would this occur in the game. Now, thinking about the regularity of it and compare it to how it was/would be used throughout the rest of the game (in cases other than the example you gave/didn't give for some unknown reason).


What sort of balance did you find?


Now, we don't want to complicate things further by bringing into the discussion points Bull raised like 'entirety' or 'replaced with a ruck', so instead I'll agree that if we use this article as a trigger to expanding our opinions/thoughts, why not allow a scrum to be reset if that is what they(you) want? Stopping the clock for it greatly removes the need to stop 5 minutes of scrum feeds happening. Fixing the law interpretations (not incorrectly rewarding the dominant team) and reducing the amount of offences that result in a penalty would greatly reduce the amount of repeat scrums in the first place. And now that refs a card happy, when a penalty offence is committed it's going to be far more likely it results in the loss of a player, then the loss of scrums completely and instead having a 15 on 13 advantage for the scrum dominant team to then run their opposition ragged. So why not take the scrum again (maybe you've already asked yourself that question by now)?


It will kind be like a Power Play in Hockey. Your outlook here is kind of going to depend on your understanding of what removing repeat scrums was put in place for, but I'm happy the need for it is gone in a new world order. As I've said on every discussion on this topic, scrums are great, it is just what they result in that hasn't been. Remove the real problem and scrum all you like. The All Blacks will love zapping that energy out of teams.

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