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There could be a baptism by fire for Australian playmaker Matt Toomua when his new team
There could be a baptism by fire for Australian playmaker Matt Toomua when his new team, Leicester Tigers, travel to a sold-out Scotstoun to face Glasgow Warriors in the opening game of this season’s Champions Cup.
Tigers director or rugby Richard Cockerill has intimated that the versatile Toomua could well make his European debut north of the border this week as last season’s semi-finalists seek a winning start to the 2016/17 campaign. With Munster Rugby and Racing 92 also in Pool 1, every point is going to count in the race for a place in the last eight.
“There aren’t many second chances in Europe and we need to get something out of Friday night, so we need our best players available. There’s every chance Matt will start against Glasgow,” said Cockerill.
“He will travel up to Glasgow as he is a top-quality player. He makes everything look very easy and there is no substitute for quality. He’s only been here a short period of time, but he’s a great footballer and he learns quickly.
“Any points in Europe, especially away from home, are vital and this is not the easiest European pool in which to win away matches, is it? There are no games where you think, ‘Oh, we’ll go there and win’.
“If we do go and win at Scotstoun, or against Munster or Racing 92 away later in the campaign, it will be a bloody good day at the office.”
Glasgow head coach Greg Townsend reached the semi-finals as a player with Castres Olympique in 2002, but his first goal in what will be his final season at Scotstoun before taking over from Vern Cotter as the Scottish coach, will be to get his side into the quarter-finals for the first time.
“Our history is that we have never got out of our pool in Europe and that’s the first very important, but very difficult goal, for us. That’s the first carrot and then, much further down the line, is the fact the final is at BT Murrayfield,” said Townsend.
“We were very disappointed not to make the PRO12 final at Murrayfield last season and we will be using that hurt as motivation for this season. We haven’t yet reached our potential and played consistently well in our six games in Europe and we need to do that to get out of our pool.”
It is the second season in a row that Glasgow will have faced French champions Racing 92 in their pool. Munster are well known rivals from the PRO12, and the team they beat to win that title two seasons ago, while Leicester replace Northampton Saints from last season as the Aviva Premiership offering.
“We learn a lot when we play week in, week out against the big European teams. There was a big improvement from when we played Racing and Northampton at the start of the pool to our return games,” said Townsend.
“We beat Racing and we led Northampton with three minutes to go, before we picked up a yellow card and gave away a penalty. We know we have to be better than that to take on Leicester, who are improving, and Racing who will have moved on from last season.”
The Warriors are sweating on the fitness of second row Tim Swinson, who has a rib injury, and Simone Favaro, who has a shoulder strain.
Match Facts
- The clubs have met five times previously in Europe with Leicester winning four, however, their last clash was back in January 2001.
- All five previous matches have been decided by margins of 12+ points. The first encounter was won by Leicester by a 71-point margin which still stands as Tigers’ biggest win and Glasgow’s biggest defeat in Europe.
- Glasgow won two of their three pool stage games at home last season, restricting the opposition to six points or fewer on each occasion.
- Leicester Tigers scored 3.9 tries per game on average in last season’s Champions Cup, more than any other club.
- Glasgow had the best scrum success last season (97%), losing just one of 34 scrums on their own put-in.
- Glasgow need just 10 points to reach 2,000 in the European Cup history. They’ve scored 1,990 to date in 103 games at an average of 19.3 points per game.
- Glasgow conceded 52 penalties in last season’s competition at an average of 8.7 per game, fewer than any other club.
- Tigers captain, Tom Youngs, was the top lineout thrower in the competition last season hitting his man with 66 of his 70 throws.
- Leicester’s Peter Betham made 12 offloads in last season’s competition, the joint most of any player and level with Wasps’ No 8, Nathan Hughes.
Glasgow Warriors have never broken out of their pool in the European Cup
Glasgow Warriors have never broken out of their pool in the European Cup, but after piling on a record score against Leicester Tigers they have given themselves the perfect start to their Pool 3 campaign.
Two interception tries were the icing on the cake for home coach Gregor Townsend, although the truth is there should have been more tries. Thee scrums on the Tigers five metre line were so dominant that Leicester lost a player to the sin-bin, but Glasgow failed to score.
Tigers were on the scoreboard first thanks to the boot of Owen Williams and also grabbed the game’s first try when wing Adam Thomstone got wrapped up in a driving line-out moments after home flanker Ryan Wilson had seen yellow.
Williams nailed the conversion and the visitors’ looked well in control of their destiny. Glasgow were giving away penalties at a rate of knots and they weren’t able to make the most of Matt Toomu’s 10 minute break after he tip-tackled Finn Russell.
But as soon as the home pack got to grips with the pace of the game, and began to dominate the battle of the gain line, there was only going to be one winner. Glasogw attacked close to the fringes of the rucks and Italian wing Leonard Sarto burst over for the first of three first half tries.
Next over the Tigers line was hooker Fraser Brown and scrum half Henry Pyrgos made it three tries in nine minutes with his close range snipe. That made it 22-13 at the break – Williams kicked another penalty just before the interval – but Russell extended the lead with a penalty 15 minutes into the second half.
Glasgow’s set-piece dominance should have yielded them something, but they had to be content with another Russell penalty that made it 28-13 after 67 minutes. The bonus-point arrived moments later thanks to a 70 metre interception try from Olympic sevens silver medallist Mark Bennett.
Then Sarto followed suit to cap off a great night at a sold-out Scotstoun. That was enough to earn the Italian flyer the Heineken Man of the Match award and Russell’s conversion took the score beyond the 41 points notched by Ulster against Leicester in the 2010/11 season.
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