TOMMY Seymour is pleased to be in the pink once again, but he know that a big task looms for Glasgow Warriors if they are to maintain the health of their European Champions Cup bid.
The British & Irish Lions winger is proud to be among the rugby players who are doing their bit by wearing the rather garish boots to help promote breast cancer awareness, demonstrating an understanding that there are far more important matters in life than the outcome of sporting encounters.
However he also knows that with in its proper context Glasgow’s meeting with Leinster in the European Champions Cup is a vital one and he readily acknowledged that it is a match they have to win to have any chance of reaching the knockout stages as they did last season.
“I don’t think that’s unfair, I don’t think that is too big a statement to be quite honest. Its fairly well documented in the media, players, coaches that you speak to, that home games are vitally important,” said Seymour.
“Add in that we haven’t managed to win in round one as well. People talk about the group stages being as close to knock out as you can get in a group scenario and that’s the way it is. This game has real significance and we are not going to shy away from that.
“It’s a close to a must win as you can get. We have an incredibly strong pool, that’s pretty obvious, so you can’t allow margins to get too big between teams and certainly we will be looking to carry on the home form from earlier in the year.”
In terms of sporting integrity it has always been a profound weakness of Europe’s top rugby competition that the teams in the highest quality groups are additionally disadvantaged because not all second placed teams go through. That means those with relative minnows in their pools have a much better chance of securing one of those runners-up spots.
In terms of both reputation and form it is particularly pronounced in the case of Glasgow’s pool this season which contained four teams that had, among them, suffered just three defeats in 24 matches before the Champions Cup got underway.
Having lost the season long unbeaten record they took into last weekend’s match at English champions Exeter Chiefs while Leinster were beating ex-Scotland coach Vern Cotter’s Montpellier with both sides securing bonus points in that match, Glasgow will consequently be pretty much cut adrift if they lose tomorrow since they would be at least eight points behind Leinster.
“I think every team starts with the idea that they want to win it. Given the strength of our pool you could argue that maybe only one team is going to creep out of there,” Seymour acknowledged. “It doesn’t change our mindset, we still want to win the pool.”
He knows, too, that they must be aware of the importance of bonus points, however they have to remain focused on their main priority.
“Of course that’s important and if you look at the weekend Exeter managed to stop us from getting one, so bonus points are obviously huge, but for us the mentality has to be to get the win first,” said Seymour. “Assuming we’re winning it would be delightful to stop them getting anything out of the game… if they got a bonus point it wouldn’t be the perfect scenario, but it would certainly be a very good one.”
He maintained that there has been no loss of conviction within their squad that they can get the result they need.
“The belief hasn’t dropped off. We don’t want to get too negative. We won six out of seven, we won all our league games and Europe is incredibly different to the league,” he observed. “We didn’t really click at the weekend and that isn’t taking anything away from Exeter. They had a great game plan, they executed it brilliantly and it was a wet night, but we didn’t click well and we left a few things out on the park.
“We’ve got full belief that coming back to Scotstoun and getting in front of our fans and while we have a lot of things to rectify we can go out there and get a win.”
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