A long awaited try

Something remarkable happened on Monday night when Glasgow tackled Leinster. In his 74th competitive game for the club - and more than five years on from his Warriors debut - D'arcy Rae notched his first ever try for the club*.

The Scotland international is
part of an exclusive group of players who have taken more than 50 appearances
to score their first try for Glasgow. The good news for the tight-head prop is
that he isn’t even the slowest to get off the mark with a couple of Warrior
Centurions being even more tardy when it came to crossing the line…

Andy Hall – first try in his 57th game

Andy holds the unique distinction of being the only Glasgow forward to score a drop goal
for the club – and bizarrely he managed that milestone before he’d even managed
to bag a try! His drop goal came against the Celtic Warriors in early November 2003, with his try following seven weeks later against Edinburgh. Neither feat was
repeated!

The lock managed a slightly higher strike rate when he moved on to
the Dragons, with a return of two tries in 77 games for the Newport side.

Gordon McIlwham – first try in his 62nd game

As
part of the squad in Glasgow’s very first season as a professional outfit,
Gordon set the standards for other props to follow in eschewing try-scoring
opportunities. He blotted his copybook by crossing against Cardiff Blues at
Hughenden in September 2000, but thereafter returned to the day job of pushing
scrums and hitting rucks and never again getting involved on the scoreboard. He finished his time at the club with a strike rate of a try every 101 games.

Ed Kalman – first try in his 85th game

Remarkably,
the two players with the longest scoreless streaks in Warriors history made
their club debuts in the same game.

Ed came off the bench against Cardiff Blues
in September 2007 for his first Glasgow appearance. Five and a half years and more than 80 games later, he was
still looking for his first score when – against Leinster in March 2013 – a good
bit of work to be on the shoulder of Josh Strauss saw Ed take an offload and
crash over from the ideal prop’s range of two metres.

Pat Macarthur – first try in his 113th game

Pat’s
first appearance for Glasgow came in the same match as Ed Kalman, but the hooker
had to wait even longer to break his duck. Having watched his fellow try
avoider finally succumb, it was another two years before he found himself in a
scoring position. As was so often the case in this period, everything Niko
Matawalu touched turned to tries and the hooker finally touched down when the
flying Fijian put him in against Ospreys in February 2015. The reactions of the
players say it all – “finally!”.

After
waiting all that time for a try, Pat seemed to get a taste for scoring. In his
last 52 games for the club, he nabbed five tries in total!

Of course,
not everyone who plays for the Warriors manages to score a try. The longest
completed Glasgow career without troubling the scoreboard belongs to tight-head
prop Justin Va’a. The Samoan international was one of the cornerstones of Sean
Lineen’s rebuild of the Warriors pack, but never once in his 63 game stint did
he manage to bag a five-pointer.

This is
an area which is dominated by forwards – but there have also been some backs
who have been relatively slow to get off the mark. The most belated of them all
definitely isn’t someone that might have been expected to be so reticent about
scoring. Finn Russell took until his 30th game to cross for his first try. Just
11 of the 190 players to score tries for Glasgow have taken longer to achieve
that milestone.

Of course,
Finn being Finn he snapped his scoreless streak in style with a try double in
the crucial final league game in 2014/15 against Ulster. Two games later he
notched another in the Guinness PRO12 Grand Final. The maverick stand off had just been
biding his time, waiting for the right moment!

*Fans of
props on the wing action may recall D’arcy blasting down the North Stand
touchline to cross for a try against the Army in 2015. Unfortunately for the
big man that was in a friendly match so is not part of the official record.

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— Glasgow Warriors (@GlasgowWarriors) November 3, 2020