'That goes without saying': The Franco Smith reaction to painful Glasgow exit

Franco Smith was proud of his Glasgow players for raising the expectation levels despite being knocked out of the Investec Champions Cup following a 22-19 defeat at home to Toulon.

Warriors had been favourites to progress from their first-ever home quarter-final in this competition, but Toulon proved too strong on the day as they handed the hosts a first home loss for 12 months.

Smith admitted it was a huge disappointment to have their European journey end at this stage but praised his players for changing the mindset to the point that many people had expected them to defeat the three-time European champions.

The head coach said: “I’m obviously disappointed with the result. That goes without saying, I suppose.

“We worked really hard in the last years to get this right. We set ourselves up for a good run-in, but there’s still work to be done.

“The expectation that’s grown, we created that as a team so I’m very proud of that.

“I said it to the boys in the changing room, ‘we created the expectation’. People thought that we could win this competition and that is a big mind shift.”

Stafford McDowall, Ollie Smith and Gregor Hiddleston crossed over for the hosts, while Gael Drean replied with a brace before Jean-Baptiste Gros and Nacho Brex sealed the win for Toulon.

Smith added: “Maybe the motivation we take from this is to believe we can make that next step.

“I’m not saying we didn’t show that today but the fact that we played at home and everybody’s coming out here and everybody’s excited about that, that little expectation, it comes into the changing room.

“You saw it in the first five or 10 minutes, little knock-ons or little things that go wrong and we must learn to deal with that as a club.”

Glasgow are set to lose a number of senior players in the summer including Huw Jones, Jack Dempsey, Johnny Matthews and Adam Hastings.

But Smith insisted this was not their only shot at European success.

He added: “We’ve lost big players before, I don’t think that’s the end of it.

“Jack, Huw, Johnny and Adam, they’ve contributed massively but the understudies are there. The next guys are there to take over.

“I’m absolutely not concerned. This is a solid club. We believe in significance, not in success. We will continue to produce a very good product, regardless of some of the results.”