Performance not good enough – Wilson

• 5 Dec 2020

Glasgow Warriors Head Coach Danny Wilson says his team’s performance let them down at Scotstoun, after watching his team fall short against the Dragons in the Guinness PRO14.

Despite running in three tries, the home side fell to a 23-22 defeat following a dramatic final phase of play that saw Brandon Thomson’s conversion attempt come back off the post following Johnny Matthews’ 83^rd minute score.

The Glasgow boss believes his side didn’t do enough to deserve the victory, however, after seeing his side held scoreless for 30 minutes of the second half.

“It’s a tough one to swallow,” said Wilson.

“To be honest, though, we didn’t play well enough to win that. I’ve praised this group week on week from a new group coming together point of view, but that wasn’t the case this week. We didn’t play well enough, simple as that.

“We struggled to string phases together in the second half, and we gave away far too many penalties. That meant we didn’t have field position, which means we couldn’t build pressure. When we did get the territory and build pressure, you saw what happened – we go over for Johnny’s try at the end there.”

Wilson also refused to focus on the final kick, underling instead the belief that the Glasgow collective came up short at Scotstoun.

“Ultimately we weren’t good enough,” he said.

“We’re not going to put anything on Brandon’s shoulders. We didn’t perform well enough and didn’t put enough points on the board. That’s the story and that’s what we have to focus on.”

A visit to Sandy Park to take on defending European champions Exeter now awaits the Warriors, as Wilson’s men travel south to open their 2020/21 Heineken Champions Cup campaign.

It’ll be another test for the Warriors in a challenging season, and one that the Head Coach knows will require his group to up their game by a number of levels.

“Last weekend’s performance [against Cardiff] was a good display to get a good win,” explained Wilson.

“The focus for us has been improving week on week. Tonight we dropped off our level. Whether that’s because we’ve leaned on a lot of guys who have played a lot of rugby due to our lack of depth at the moment, we don’t know. I’m not going to shy away from saying it wasn’t a good performance tonight.

“We’ve now got 12 internationals coming back into the group, so we need to gel them together as quickly as we can in order to go into Europe. Exeter away is our next challenge.”