'We expect a team that gave us 50 points earlier this season': Franco Smith

Glasgow head coach Franco Smith insists he is reading nothing into suggestions Leinster have lost confidence and are suffering from “performance anxiety” as they prepare to tackle Warriors in Saturday’s opening URC semi-final in Dublin.

The defending champions head across the Irish Sea with a spring in their step having put their own sticky late-season patch behind them with a thumping 36-18 quarter-final victory over the Stormers last week.

Leinster meanwhile, having seen their hopes of a fifth European crown crushed for another year with a surprise Champions Cup semi-final home defeat by Northampton, laboured to an unconvincing 33-21 win over Scarlets in their own last-eight encounter.

Former Leinster hooker Bernard Jackman, a respected media analyst, believes a series of high-profile failures – three successive final losses in the Champions Cup before the latest Saints setback, three straight semi-final defeats in the URC since their last title in 2021 – and the burden of ending their trophy drought is seeping into their performances.

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13 - 5

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“Their defence is starting to show creaks and attack-wise they are struggling to execute,” Jackman told the BBC Scotland rugby podcast this week. “The players don’t seem to be playing with any real anger. In actual fact, it looks like their confidence is gone. It’s amazing what a defeat can do to you.”

Yet it is only eight weeks since Leinster crushed an under-strength Glasgow 52-0 in the Champions Cup quarter-finals and also beat Warriors 13-5 – again at the Aviva Stadium – in a low-key final game of the regular URC season three weeks ago.

Smith is adamant any talk of Leinster’s recent struggles will not distract his side from the size of the task at hand on Saturday as they attempt to reach a second straight final.

“We absolutely ignore all of that,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with what’s going to happen between the lines there. I realise there’s a lot of talk. If they read it, it’s up to them.

“We expect a team that gave us 50 points earlier this season. So I’m not going to be lured into any trap regarding that. I know that they would like to perform well, so we expect everything from them.

“I don’t want to call us the underdogs. I think they’re the favourites. They’ve been playing well the whole season. We all know what it would mean to them to end at the top of this competition. They’ve got such a good side. They’ve got a good budget, a good academy system.

“They’ve been on top of the game for eight, nine years. We know that they’re the favourites. We’re just going to go out there and give ourselves the best chance.”

Having beaten Stormers at home in the quarter-finals for a second straight year, Glasgow are travelling a similar path if they are to repeat their title win of 12 months ago, with a semi-final in Ireland – last year they upset Munster at Thomond Park – and a possible final in South Africa, where they stunned the Bulls in Pretoria.

But Smith insists they are not looking to those remarkable triumphs for inspiration.

“We know it’s a new challenge,” he said. “I think the confidence that’s in the group that this road has been walked before is enough. If we keep on looking back, we will not see what’s ahead. We are more focused on the new challenge. Leinster is not Munster. The Aviva is not Limerick. There’s enough change for us to adapt our approach again.”

Four of Leinster’s 12 British and Irish Lions selections will be missing, with full-back Hugo Keenan and openside Josh van der Flier joining prop Tadgh Furlong and centre Garry Ringrose on the sidelines. The hosts are also missing a two-time Lion in Robbie Henshaw, so Jamie Osborne will continue at outside centre alongside Jordie Barrett.

Opposite Osborne will be Sione Tuipulotu, who Smith has opted – in the continued absence of Huw Jones – to move out one place with Tom Jordan also switching from fly-half to inside centre to accommodate the “different skill-set” of Adam Hastings at 10.

“Obviously, we didn’t know their team at the start of the week, so it wasn’t intentionally done that way,” Smith said when asked if the 13 channel was one Glasgow might seek to exploit.

“I think they’ve got good enough quality. You’ve got Jordie Barrett there and Jamie Osborne has played before and is trialled and tested. I don’t think they’ve got a lack of depth in that part of the game.

“In a semi-final like this, yes, small margins are important, but they’ve got quality players. They’ve got depth. They’ve shown that the whole season by beating everybody else as well with a second group of players. I don’t think they are weakened at all.”

In the continued absence of Zander Fagerson, who has missed Glasgow’s last six games with a calf problem which looks likely to keep him sidelined until he joins up with the Lions, Fin Richardson faces the biggest test of his career at tighthead.

The 26-year-old former Scotland U20 cap, whose previous senior experience came in loan spells at Plymouth Albion and Cornish Pirates while in Exeter’s academy before joining Warriors last summer, has started seven games this season, the last against Leinster recently before missing the quarter-final with a thumb injury.

“He played really well the last time against Leinster and scrummed well against Andrew Porter in the previous game, so he merited the opportunity,” added Smith in explaining why Murphy Walker, who was replaced after 33 minutes on his first start of the season against Stormers and was suffering with a “strain” earlier in the week, had dropped out.

“Murphy hasn’t had much time in the saddle. He played the game last week because of the necessity that Fin wasn’t ready to play that game. He did well but we have a fit, ready player that’s played already in that [Leinster] game and understands what the threat is.”