Exeter v Glasgow Warriors

January 15, 2022

Exeter 52 - 17 Glasgow Warriors

Champions Cup match played at Sandy Park on Saturday January 15th 2022 | No comments

Matt Fagerson's try gave Warriors the lead before they were blown away by Exeter It looked so good for Glasgow after going 17-14 ahead early in the second-half of this evening's Champions Cup match at Sandy Park, but mistakes, poor discipline and Exeter's power saw the Warriors blown away by full-time.

Tries from Kiran McDonald and Matt Fagerson, both converted by Ross Thompson put Warriors in good position but the collapse that followed could prove fatal to their Champions Cup hopes.

Exeter wing Tom O'Flaherty scored a hat-trick, while there was a double for No.8 Sam Simmonds before Luke Cowan-Dickie, Jack Nowell and Dave Ewers also scored. Fly-half Joe Simmonds kicked four conversions and centre Henry Slade two.

Warriors now face a crunch clash against La Rochelle in their final pool game next weekend.

"It's going to take some looking at, but basically we collapsed. We got ourselves back into the lead, 17-14 after 45 minutes, then we shipped 38 points in 35 minutes," said head coach Danny Wilson after the match.

"I didn't see it coming. With our recent form, it was very disappointing. A few things went against us with a couple of injuries. We had to rejig things which left us a little bit exposed, but it's not an excuse for that much exposure.

"We gave them so many entries into our 22 which is the one thing you can't do against this opposition. Errors, penalties, you name it. All of aspects of our game fell apart in the last 30 minutes."

Asked about the atmosphere in the dressing room after the match, Wilson said: "There's a very despondent group, a little bit shell-shocked.

"I said to them that we didn't play our finest game of rugby in the first 50 minutes, but we did enough to get into the lead.

"We're not going to brush that under the carpet. We need to look at it and find out what happened, and also we need to bounce back very quickly and get back on the right page.

"We've had bombshell games before. Every team has them in a season. That's not been our recent form, every time we've had a bombshell game in the past we've bounced back pretty quickly and that's what we have got to do now.

"We've got La Rochelle at home, which is another strong opposition, but if we can bounce back quickly, we can still get something from this competition."