15 for 10: Glasgow Warriors - an all-decade team
In a decade of unprecedented success for Glasgow Warriors, ten years where rugby found has a home in a city in thrall to football, a mountain of talent has been cultivated, flourished and left for bigger stages – some of it coming back for more.
Glasgow won the PRO12 in 2015 – their first and only major honour – and featured in two more finals and four more semi-finals. They reached the European Champions Cup quarter-finals twice – further than they had ever gone before – and claimed the scalps of Leicester Tigers, Racing 92, Bath, Exeter Chiefs and others as they came of age in the most ruthless club competition of them all.
Gregor Townsend built on the excellent work of Sean Lineen and became Scotland coach. Warriors hired Dave Rennie, a two-time Super Rugby champion regarded as one of the smartest operators in the game, to replace him.
At the start of the decade, they were an unglamorous upstart playing in a jaunty old football stadium with their training pitches, gym gear and offices in another part of the city. By the end of it, Glasgow had everything they needed at their Scotstoun home, they had become a PRO14 giant playing glorious rugby and selling out the ground so prolifically that expansion is a major priority.
Selecting the premier Warriors XV of the past ten years was a fiendishly tough task. There are players who emptied themselves for the jersey and earned little recognition outside of the dressing room who don’t make this team. There are also those whose brilliance was stark but fleeting in the context of the decade.
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The players ultimately chosen were picked not just for their ability, but for the influence of their contributions and the success they helped to deliver. Some are nailed-on starters, others more marginal choices. Plenty will disagree, but that’s all part of the fun. Here goes…
15. Stuart Hogg
Little explanation needed. Hogg will go down as one of the greatest Glasgow and Scotland players of all time. Although Test duty and injuries meant Warriors were deprived of his services for swathes of recent seasons, he remained a hugely important figure.
Hogg’s precious ability to stress teams, hoist Warriors off the ropes with a flash of brilliance, leadership and sheer bloody-mindedness made him an incredibly precious asset. His skill-set is world-class, but his streak of belligerence and refusal to be cowed are almost as telling.
There was a time in 2014 where the full-back grew too big for his boots and almost left the club. Thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, he stuck around, matured, became a PRO12 champion, and eventually earned a fabulous move to Exeter Chiefs. Glasgow came painfully close to sending him off last May with another league medal.
14. Tommy Seymour
Since joining Glasgow in 2011, Seymour’s sustained contribution to the Warriors’ rise has been massive. A terrific finisher, predatory interception specialist and magnificent aerial option, he has scored 45 tries in 139 appearances, famously barrelling over four times in a single match against Leinster in 2016.
He has twice made the league’s dream team and became part of the Hogg-Seymour-Sean Maitland back-three axis that dominated Scotland’s backline under Vern Cotter and then Townsend, scoring a tour-best three tries for the British and Irish Lions in 2017.
The wing announced his Test retirement last month after an excellent 55-cap career. Glasgow will continue to benefit from his quality and nous.
13. Mark Bennett
Over the years, Glasgow have deployed an array of exceptional centres, making these two positions particularly hard to fill. At 13, Richie Vernon, having shifted from the back row, brought ballast and intelligence. The effervescent little Nick Grigg has been one of the most effective players of the Rennie era.
But Bennett deserves this slot for his exceptional ability on both sides of the ball. An Olympic silver medallist and star of the 2015 World Cup, he is quick, direct, agile, and starred for Glasgow during the years where they rose from plucky contenders to rampant champions.
"What am I doing wrong? Is there anything that’s me? What do I need to change?"
– @JLyall93 talks to @alexdunbar13 on the pain of his last year at Glasgow, Huw Jones, Scotland goals & and his rejuvenating move to Brive. https://t.co/i6C5xSaHxI
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) December 2, 2019
12. Alex Dunbar
Graeme Morrison did a load of largely unheralded shovelling. Pete Horne deserves recognition as one of the hardest-working and most savagely lampooned players in Scottish rugby. Few have given as much to the Glasgow jersey.
Sam Johnson should be firmly in the conversation too for his attacking panache and defensive brutality, but due to his luckless injury record, the Australian’s emergence came a little too late in the decade for this XV.
Dunbar, as former defence coach Matt Taylor put it last week, was “like an extra flanker in the backline”. At his best, the centre was a ball-carrying colossus, turnover machine and thunderous tackler.
His summer exit after months of injuries, non-selection and a loan spell was sour for a player whose contribution was so weighty.
11. DTH van der Merwe
The explosive Canadian has a club-record 52 tries in 121 appearances and a knack of scoring in the biggest matches. In 23 top-tier European outings this decade, van der Merwe scored 10 tries. In ten 1872 Cup derbies against Edinburgh, he got four. On Glasgow’s run to the 2015 title, he raced in for a late, match-levelling score against Ulster in the semi-final and bagged two more in the showpiece hammering of Munster.
Van der Merwe in full flight is desperately hard to put down. Even approaching 34, and in the twilight of his second stint at the club, he remains a potent presence. Maitland, Sean Lamont, Max Evans and Leo Sarto all deserve acknowledgement as well, though.
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Finn Russell gives Jim Hamilton and RugbyPass a kicking masterclass at Racing 92’s state of the art facility in Paris
10. Finn Russell
The finest Scottish fly-half since Townsend. An impish Stirlingshire stonemason who came roaring from relative obscurity to the No10 jersey in 2013/14.
Russell conjured a delicious array of kicks and outrageous passes, but the bravery to back his skills under extreme pressure and refusal to be cowed by errors stood out just as much. He had a hand in so many phenomenal Glasgow moments, not least the swooping parabola to van der Merwe for that 2015 semi-final try and touchline conversion to win the game at the death.
Sure, Russell could force things and reach for the miracle play rather than sticking to the system. But Glasgow didn’t beat that out of him. As he developed, his game-management grew in spades. And at Racing 92, he has added dazzling clips to his showreel and cemented himself as one of the best – and arguably the most entertaining – pivots in world rugby.
Although seen as a less glamorous option, Duncan Weir was a canny, prolific alternative to Russell who has thrived at Worcester Warriors, while Ruaridh Jackson produced some fine rugby in both of his stints at the club.
9. Henry Pyrgos
This is a seriously tricky call. Chris Cusiter was a world-class operator. George Horne sniffs out line breaks and tries like a ravenous wild dog. Ali Price has overcome dips in form and attitude and twice been named player of the season. Niko Matawalu did some of his best – and most eye-catching – work in a Glasgow jersey at scrum-half.
Pyrgos had neither the spiky combativeness of Cusiter, nor the searing attack game of Horne or Matawalu or Price, but was an exceptionally clever operator. Townsend backed him to start many of the biggest games.
Across nearly 150 Warriors outings, his skill lay in choosing when to bring in the bruisers or when to unleash the show-stoppers outside him, when to go to the skies or when to have a dart at the fringes. A leader.
Was walking the dog and the amount of rubbish at the side of the road is disgusting. Scotland is one of the most beautiful countries in the world and some dickheads are ruining it @NicolaSturgeon @southayrshire get your finger out pic.twitter.com/WLPl7lmvpa
— Gordon Reid (@GGreid87) December 24, 2019
1. Gordon Reid
A close-run thing between Reid, Scotland’s honorary ambassador to Japan, and Ryan Grant, whose set-piece grunt and class around the paddock ought to have made him a Test Lion in 2013.
Reid pips him for his sustained graft at the heart of the Warriors pack that went on to lift the title and his rambunctious carrying in open prairie. He is probably the most entertaining bloke to pull on a Glasgow jersey in the past decade too – the way he handles press duties, interacts with supporters and generally provides uproariously funny material on his social media are rare.
His is an important tale as well – a working-class kid who pulled pints at an Ayrshire bar in one of the heartlands of Warriors country, an antidote to the posh-boy stereotype that still pervades Scottish rugby. The game needs stories like this. It also needs characters like Reid.
2. Fraser Brown
Brown combines an intense competitiveness, fantastic skill-set and exceptional rugby brain. He gives Glasgow an extremely potent extra option over ball, and the sort of belligerence needed in the intense throes of play-off rugby.
With his carrying, handling and dynamism, the Scotland hooker was particularly key in the run to the Champions Cup quarter-finals of 2017. Getting him tied to the club until 2023 – by which time he will have put in ten years with Warriors – earlier this season was a fine bit of business.
Dougie Hall and Pat MacArthur were also both tremendous servants.
‘We need to have another 20, 30 players that are playing at a high level’
– @15GavinHastings tells @heagneyl what is needed to help @Scotlandteam, his pride in @adamhastings96 and @GlasgowWarriors, and his support for old pals @DoddieWeir5 and Tom Smithhttps://t.co/Z2bYF21t2M— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) December 14, 2019
3. Jon Welsh
Moray Low was a strong contender, while Zander Fagerson is fast becoming a totemic figure for Glasgow and may very well be Scotland’s premier tighthead for the next two World Cups.
But weighing up the scale of their contributions over the decade means Welsh shades it. A colossus in the Warriors front row, his incredible strength and scrummaging were pivotal to Glasgow’s rise in the days of Lineen.
Welsh once gave an opposition pack such a horsing that he was penalised for falling flat on his face, the rival loosehead reversing so quickly that he couldn’t chase his feet fast enough to keep up. The big tighthead left on a wave of tears and glory in 2015.
4. Al Kellock
Glasgow have had technically superior locks to Kellock. He was not the most athletic specimen, not the biggest ball-carrier or the most ferocious tackler, but his role in propelling the club on its rapid upward trajectory cannot be understated.
‘Big Al’ was absolutely instrumental in the transformation of Warriors, instilling and driving a culture of togetherness that remains sewn into the fabric of the place. A leader of men, lineout guru and a PRO12-winning captain who still commands immense respect at Scotstoun. For that, he deserves his place.
Scotland lock Jonny Gray on why he is off to new pastures in England next season https://t.co/EWXAVIPHLh
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) January 3, 2020
5. Jonny Gray
Leaving out the elder Gray is a big call, especially given his blistering form in the early part of the decade. But Jonny Gray’s outstanding service to Glasgow across nearly eight years in the first team makes him a shoo-in.
Gray is unremitting in his thirst for work, his eye-watering tackle statistics reaching positively freakish levels. Last season, he made 43 in a single match without missing any – a league record. The most recent data – courtesy of Warriors-minded boffin Kevin Millar – indicates that in the past three calendar years, he has missed only three tackles from 452 attempts on PRO14 duty. That’s bonkers!
The big lock is more than just a tackle machine, though. An excellent lineout operator and leader by actions rather than words, his brutality with the ball has grown too. You fancy he could still add layers of destructiveness in that department, and it will be fascinating to see what gains Rob Baxter can orchestrate when Gray joins Exeter Chiefs next season.
6. Leone Nakarawa
We have cheated a bit here by shifting Nakarawa into the back row to get Kellock, Gray and the Fijian in. But let’s be honest, you could stick Nakarawa at inside centre and he would probably do you a turn.
There are precious few in the game who can do what he can. Chuck him a straightjacket, tie him in chains and lock him in a coffin, and you would still fancy Nakarawa to wriggle an arm free and deliver the most startling of offloads.
He brought ballast in the set-piece, athleticism in the lineout, and unique stardust in open prairie. Completely unplayable in the 2015 final, Glasgow’s greatest day, his return to the club this month is a very timely boost.
People are genuinely concerned at where Glasgow Warriors are going
– @JLyall93 looks are what needs to be done to arrest the sad decline of a club whose success has been earned the hard the wayhttps://t.co/tqdM5YW8mU
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) January 2, 2020
7. Rob Harley
If you are playing Nakarawa at six, and fielding a big-carrying eight, you want a real mongrel to balance a back row heavy on attack but light on scrapping over ball.
John Barclay, Chris Fusaro, Simone Favaro and Callum Gibbins have given Glasgow heaps in the scavenging department. Barclay is the most talented of the lot and has enjoyed the most successful career. Favaro was a cherished kamikaze destroyer but injuries felled him too often.
Warriors have had loose forwards with more star quality than Harley, but you can’t leave him out. Not with his unmatched haul of 225 Glasgow appearances, each one as attritional and relentless as the last.
An insatiable breakdown pugilist, he hits a frightening volume of rucks and takes an obscene degree of physical punishment. Detested by opponents; treasured by his team-mates.
8. Josh Strauss
Strauss had – and still has – his critics, chiefly for his transient presence in games, the perception that he fades out of the battle too often following a rousing carry with a long spell of relative anonymity.
At his best, the hulking South African brought a thunderous – and pivotal – dynamism to the Glasgow team. He could gobble up yards he had no right to make. That’s a skill Warriors have struggled to replace since his departure in 2017.
It is hard to do without Johnnie Beattie’s all-court brilliance, while Ryan Wilson’s hostility, work-rate, leadership and inimitable character make him very tough to omit. Matt Fagerson is also the next big thing.
WATCH: Gavin Hastings, the former Scotland and British and Irish Lions player, surprises a lifelong Glasgow Warriors fan, taking him to the game and giving him a unique tour of Scotstoun
Comments on RugbyPass
I like this, but ultimately rugby already has enough trophies. Trying to make more games “consequential" might prove to be a fools errand, although this is a less bad idea than some others. Minor quibble with the title of the article; it isn’t very meaningful to say the boks are the unofficial world champions when it would be functionally impossible for the Raeburn trophy not to be held by the world champions. There’s a period of a few months every 4 years when there is no “unofficial” world champion, and the Raeburn trophy is held by the actual world champions.
8 Go to commentsIts a great idea but one that I dont think will have a lot of traction. It will depend on the prestige that they each hold but if you can do that it would be great. When Japan beat the Boks (my team) I was absolutely devestated but I wont deny the great game they played that day. We were outclassed and it was one of the best games of rugby I have seen. Using an idea like this you might just give the the underdog teams more of an opportunity to beat the big teams and I can absolutely see it being a brilliant display of rugby. They beat us because they planned for that game. It was a great moment for Japan. This way we can remove the 4 year wait and give teams something to aim for outside of World Cup years.
8 Go to commentsHi, Dave here. Happy to answer questions 🥰
8 Go to commentsDon’t think that headline is accurate. It’s great to see Aus doing better but I’m not sure they’ve shown much threat to the top of the table. They shouldn’t be inflating wins against the lousy Highlanders and Crusaders either.
3 Go to commentsSuch a shame Roigard and Aumua picked up long term injuries, probably the two form players in the comp. Also, pretty sure Clarke Dermody isn’t their coach. Got it half right though.
3 Go to commentsOh the Aussie media, they never learn. At least Andrew Kellaway is like “Woah, yeah it’s great, but settle down there guys” having endured years of the Aussie media, fans, and often their players getting ahead of themselves only to fall flat on their faces. Have the “We'll win the Bledisloe for sure this year!” headlines started yet? It’s simple to see what’s going on. The Aussie teams are settled, they didn't lose any of their major players overseas. The Crusaders and Chiefs lost key experienced All Blacks, and Razor in the Crusaders case, and clearly neither are anywhere near as strong as last year (The Canes and Blues would probably be 3rd & 4th if they were). The Highlanders are annually average, even more so post-Aaron Smith and a big squad clean out. The two teams at the top? The two nz sides with largely the same settled roster as last year, except Ardie Savea for the Canes. They’ve both got far better coaches now too. If the Aussies are going to win the title, this is the year the kiwi sides will be weakest, so they better take their chance.
3 Go to commentsThe World Cup has to be the gold standard, line in the sand. 113 teams compete for what is the opportunity to make the pool stages, and then the knockout games for the trophy. The concept is sound. This must have been the rationale when the World Cup was created, surely? But I’m all for Looking forward and finding new ways for the SH to dominate the NH into the future. The autumn series needs a change up. Let’s start by having the NH teams come south every odd year for the Autumn/Spring series games?
8 Go to commentsWhat’ll happen when the AI models of the future go back in time and try to destroy the AI models of the past standing in their way of certain victory?
41 Go to commentsThanks, Nick. We (Seanny Maloney, Brett and I) just discussed Charlie as a potential Wallaby No 8, and wondered if he has truly realised how big he is in contact (and whether he can add 5 kg w/o slowing down). Your scouting report confirms our suspicions he has the materiel. No one knows if he has the mentality (as Johann van Graan said this week about CJ, Duane and Alfie B) to carry 10-15 times a game.
57 Go to commentsHe would be a great player for the Stormers, Dobbo should approach the guy.
3 Go to commentsGood article. A few years back when he was playing for the Cheetahs, he was a quiet standout for exactly the seasons stated here. I occasionally get to see his games in the UK, and he has become a more complete player and in many ways like an Irish player. His work ethic is so suitable to the Leinster game. I wonder if Rassie would have him listed somewhere.
3 Go to commentsResults probably skewed by the fact that a few clubs have foreign fly halves in their 30s, but most teams have young English scrum halves. Results also likely to be skewed by the fact that many teams rely on centres and fullbacks to provide depth at 10, whereas they will need to stock a large number of specialist backup 9s.
1 Go to commentsI really get the sense that when all is said and done, the path of least resistance will end up being a merger of Wasps & Worcester that essentially kills the Worcester Warriors brand and sees Wasps permanently playing at Sixways. I’m not saying that’s what should happen or what I want to happen. I just think it’s the easiest rout to take and therefore, will be what happens. Wasps will definitely return to play first, and I suppose it all depends on if they can find support at Sixways. If people turn up and support Wasps in that community, at that ground, I bet they drop the Sevenoaks plan and just remain at Sixways. Under the radar but not totally unrelated, it looks as though London Irish are going to be brought back from the dead by a German consortium and look set to return, likely to the remade Championship. It’s set to have 12 clubs next season with 14 in 2025/26, what do you want to bet those extra 2 are Wasps and London Irish?
3 Go to commentsThe shoulder is a “joint” with multiple bones. You don’t “fracture” a shoulder, you fracture any one or more of the bones that make up a shoulder.
2 Go to commentsOh dear, bones too suspect to continue?
2 Go to commentsBold headline considering the Canes and Blues are 1 and 2 and the Brumbies were soundly beaten by the Chiefs and Blues. Biggest surprise is Rebels 4 Crusaders 12 - no one saw that coming. If Aus are improving that’s great 👍
3 Go to commentsAnna, You are right, we need to have patience whilst the others catch up to England and France. Also it is the PWR that has been the game changer for England. the RFU put money into that initially at the expense of the Red Roses. I was sceptical at first but it has paid off in spades.
1 Go to commentsI think Matt Proctor became a 1 test AB in the same fixture. Cameron is quality and has been great this season, can’t believe’s he only 27. Realistically how would he not be selected for ABs squad this year. Only Dmac is ahead of him as a specialist 10. With Jordan out, it will come down to where and when Beauden Barrett slots back in, and where they want to play Ruben Love. Cameron seems an absolute lock in for the wider squad though. Added benefit of TJ-Cameron-Jordie combination at 9, 10, 11 too.
1 Go to commentsFarcical, to what end would someone want to pay to keep this thing going.
1 Go to commentsHavili, our best 12 by a mile, will be in the squad, if he stays fit. JB is the most overrated AB in the last 50 years.
61 Go to comments