Well, in the words of some useless 90’s dance act, “things can only get better.” Ok, I know it’s the first game of the season, and that backline were on barely more than nodding acquaintance with each other, but come on, if that’s not our worst performance this season God help us. A small child in the Hazell Stand was heard to declaim in the second half “oh please, don’t let them kick it again!” A sentiment familiar to anyone who watched the match.
The weather was absolutely foul; there had been a pitch inspection at 3pm which concluded that the match could go ahead. The Dragons chose to defend the deep end in the first half, perhaps hoping that further rain would ensure that Glasgow fullback Stortoni would be in danger of drowning in the second half. There was no real danger of that, however, as Parks played defensive full back for most of the match, and Stortoni played as a centre.
We started brightly enough (how many times have I written that in the past season or two?). We rocked Glasgow back and forced them into committing a series of penalties that resulted in Arlidge, or shiny new Flyarf, knocking over our first points of the season after just five minutes of play. He also managed a neat kick that almost put Fussell in just after that, but the Glasgow defence scrambled well.
Glasgow started to find their rhythm though. Parks kicked long and nearly had Max Evans in on our left wing, but Ash Smith managed to race from the other side of the pitch and slide the ball into touch. Unfortunately he got a knock on the leg for his troubles and was replaced after a few minutes limping by Shaun Connor on 18 minutes.
From there on things started to go downhill. We engaged in a game of aerial ping pong, with Parks returning every kick with interest. We started to give away penalties in our own half, with our own Parks, Richard, coming in from the side at the ruck and deliberately slowing the ball down, according to Clancy. Dan Parks missed the first one, but got the second to level the scores on 27 minutes.
We managed a smashing 15 phases of pick and drive toward half time after a cracking break from Joe, making a yard or a half each time, with Blackie and Willis nearly scoring, only for Richard Fussell to knock the ball on over the try line. Wayne Evans hopefully looked up after grounding the ball to see Clancy call for a scrum. And that was that.
Halftime had its usual effect; we came out half asleep, the opposition came out on fire (and how many times have I written that? Can we stop giving the team ovaltine and a pie in the dressing room?). Glasgow really took the game to us and the resulting infringements meant Parks scored an easy penalty two minutes in to put Glasgow in the lead.
As we warned in the prematch write up, Parks started with the cross kicks, almost putting Fa’atu in with a giant hoof down field. Wayne Evans got to it, but carried it over before Fa’atu drove it over the dead ball. Parks (again with the Parks?) did a tidy looping move from the resulting scrum that would of put Fa’atu in if the pass hadn’t been three feet over his head. Despite Parks demonstrating once again that he is a one trick show pony (heh) Fa’atu paid the price, being subbed for Andy Henderson, Max Evans moving to the wing.
We proceeded t obutcher a tidy chance by kicking a penalty to the corner. Our first lineout was dragged down as soon as it turned into a maul, but we pressed their line with a series of pick and drives, winning a second penalty. Again we kicked to the corner, spurning the points or the winnable scrum. This time Glasgow piled in the players to the lineout, winning it and clearing their lines.
This was the point where the match took a nose dive for us. During one of the rounds of kicking Connor tagged Thom Evans on the arm after he had kicked the ball. It was a silly thing to do but Evans milked it by performing a football style dive and appeal. Clancy was duly gulled into awarding a penalty and sin binning Connor. Parks then went on to prove that the weather wasn’t fazing him by landing the penalty from almost halfway to make the score 3-9.
Tkachuk and Palepoi came on for Va’a (who didn’t scrummage legally once, as far as I could see) and Barker. While this didn’t have the disastrous effect on our scrum as it did last season (mostly cos Clancy wasn’t recognising our superiority, and awarding penalties and free kicks on a rota basis), it did completely bugger our line-out.
We shortly swapped Blackie for the Dwarf, who coped pretty well with the Glasgow tighthead, making the veteran resort to all sorts of nonsense with illegal binds to try and deal with the youngster. He’s also speeded up a bit, as seen when Charteris managed an interception deep in the Drags half to pound away upfield. He was caught just inside the Glasgow half; the only Drags player to be anywhere near him was the Dwarf, unfortunately too far behind to catch Charteris’ wild basketball pass, but still. Good work from two formerly cumbersome forwards.
We brought Lee Harrison and Grant Webb on with about five minutes to go – too late to influence anything, although maybe Rhys was getting tired of trying to shunt the immobile mass that is Tkachuk. Again, we woke up in the last five minutes and realised that we were still 6 points behind, not before Parks made it 9 points behind, though. We forced a flurry of penalties from Glasgow resulting in Beattie getting a yellow card. Connor fluffed his first penalty attempt, but scored a second in injury time, at which point we played like demons trying to keep the ball alive and get down the other end. Didn’t manage it though, the ball went dead and Clancy blew up. First home defeat of the season.
So what went wrong? Basically, a lack of imagination coupled with some of the problems of last season rearing their ugly head again. We persisted with a game plan that played to Glasgow’s strengths; they’ve got an epic kicker and a fast back three, so why did we kick down their throat all the time? They’ve got a good back row, so why did we not support our runners properly and prevent the turnover? It was obvious in the first half that these things weren’t working, so why did we persist with them until there were only about two minutes of normal time remaining at the end of the match?
We had the beating of them in the tight, as was shown the twice we tried to pick and drive, so why didn’t we do that more often? The conditions should have given us a head start, but instead, because of our backlines poor acquaintance (I hope), it just meant we committed a slew of handling errors.
Things that particularly annoyed me:
1. We don’t chase our kicks. I’d hoped with an entirely new backline this might have changed from last year.
2. Our discipline was poor. Again, the most obvious offenders were new players. That’s not to say that anyone stood out positively, mind.
3. We still miss our first up tackles.
4. Our rucking will be found out.
5. Lack of imagination.

Warren Gatland talked last season about earning the right to go wide; tying up the opposition and creating the overlap. This was something we singularly failed to do.

Were there positives? Of course there were. James Arlidge appears to be that holy grail that we have been searching for – a Flyarf who can put the ball roughly where he wants it to go. All, he needs to do is start wanting it to go to better places. His hands seem to be as accurate as his boot, and he didn’t clothesline anyone, or disappear into the bottom of a ruck once, but stayed upright and did his job. Hwre.
Fussell was outstanding. He seemed to be making up for the rest of the back three on his own, being everywhere in defence and the only attacking runner we had.
Bearman likewise was epic, as usual. Made all his first up tackles, I think, and proved to be a right handful for the opposition, and has lost none of last seasons pace.
Gustafson had a good twenty minutes as well. He’s hard to stop once he gets going, and he got going more than once.
Adam Jones worked well in the lineout, showed up in the loose, and was much improved on last season.
Our scrum was solid, despite skulduggery on the part of Va’a and Low. It’s not our fault that Clancy has no idea how to ref a scrum.
And talking of Clancy, perhaps if he’d grown a pair and carded one of the Glasgow players sooner after issuing a general warning then the game may have been different. As it was he issued three or four penalties after telling the Glasgow team he was going to start carding them before he actually did produce a yellow card, with just a couple of minutes to go. Having said that, we had the talent and skill to take that game and shake it apart. It reflects poorly on us that we chose to let Glasgow win it.

My man of the match? Fussell. Absolutely.

Newport Gwent Dragons: A Smith (S Connor 18), T Selley, R Sidey, M Stcherbina, R Fussell, J Arlidge, W Evans, A Black (H Gustafson 63), T Willis (captain), R Thomas (L Harrison 75), A Jones, L Charteris, J Bearman, L Evans (J Ringer 65), R Parks (G Webb 75).

Scorer — penalties: J Arlidge, S Connor.

Glasgow: B Stortoni, L Fa’atau (A Henderson 55), M Evans, G Morrison, T Evans, D Parks, M McMillan, J Va’a, D Hall, M Low, T Barker (O Palepoi 62), A Kellock, K Brown, J Beattie, J Barclay.

Scorers — penalties: D Parks (4).

Referee: George Clancy (Ireland).

Attendance: 4, 113.