Cardiff Blues scored three tries in the last ten minutes to salvage a loser’s bonus point as well as some pride from their visit to Scotland, but Glasgow should rue the fact they could not match their opponents’ hunger late in the game. Having dominated the earlier part of the clash, the Warriors lacked bite in the second half, and they finished without the try-bonus that had looked a certainty at one point.
Yet they still won. And, to their credit, a number of Glasgow players did put in impressive shifts. Alex Dunbar has particular reason to feel satisfied, for the fact he was replaced at half-time after a sprightly 40 minutes was a clear indication that he is back in the frame for a Scotland recall more than a year after he last played for the Test side. Henry Pyrgos, the scrum half and captain, also showed he had lost none of his powers during a four-month injury absence.
Gregor Townsend, the Glasgow coach, confirmed that the Scotland management had requested that Dunbar should only play one half. The Warriors could certainly have used him after the break, for they went badly off the boil and made a frightening number of errors during the second period.
“We weren’t accurate in the second half,” said Townsend. “We turned the ball over 12 times, which is a horrendous amount. We are disappointed. Even if we had got a bonus point we would still be disappointed. We didn’t play as well as we can and as we need to to retain our title.”
Mark Bennett’s return from Scotland duty was seen in some quarters as an invitation to sharpen up his game and make the case for a return to the Test fold. If there was any truth in that interpretation, the centre did nothing to advance his cause with a lurid blunder in the 15th minute, when he should have finished off a lovely breakout move by his team-mates but dropped the ball in the act of touching it down.
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Townsend refused to blame the player for their failure to collect a bonus point. And, in fairness, Bennett still looked eager to get involved, and he atoned for his howler a few minutes later with a shimmering and ambitious run from his own half. Moreover, his colleagues shared his willingness to attack, and Lee Jones and Rory Hughes, the Glasgow wings, both saw plenty of the ball during a fast-paced first half.
That period ended with Glasgow leading 20-0. Even without Bennett’s error, it could, and probably should, have been a lot more, for they had consistently stretched the Blues wide while also depriving the Welsh side of any meaningful scoring chances. However, Glasgow lacked a little sharpness at times, and they did seem to go off the boil a little during the second quarter.
The Warriors built their score with tries by Gordon Reid and Tim Swinson, with two conversions and two penalties from Duncan Weir. Reid’s seventh-minute score came during Glasgow’s early onslaught, although most of the credit should probably go to Fraser Brown, who burst through four tackles before delivering the vital pass to the prop. Swinson’s was the last act of the first half, the lock stretching over the line after another neat break by Bennett and a sequence of fast rucks by the Glasgow forwards.
It was impossible to see how Cardiff could come back from such a deficit, and their performance for most of the third quarter suggested they had little faith in their own ability to do so anyway. However, they did finally get a foothold on the scoreboard in that period, with Rhys Patchell clipping over a 57th-minute penalty after Leone Nakarawa had been caught offside.
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By the same token, Glasgow did little during that stage of the game to suggest they were about to kick on and secure a bonus point. They were pinned back in their own 22 for spells that created an almost palpable edginess in the Scotstoun stands. There was a growing feeling that they would pay for their failure to lift the siege, and the suspicion was proved corect in the 73rd minute when Dan Fish, the Cardiff left wing, latched on to a threaded kick through to score in the corner.
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Yet Glasgow’s response was almost immediate. At the restart, Peter Murchie was taken out in the air by Aled Summerhill, the Cardiff centre, who was sent to the sin-bin and Glasgow sent the ball towards the right corner. From there, the Glasgow forwards then drove hard for the line and Simone Favaro collected their third try.
But the Blues hit back superbly. First, they sent Ellis Jenkins over for a try when two minutes were left to play; then, with the clock already past 80, they got their final reward when Macauley Cook claimed their third touchdown to bring them into bonus point territory.