Attack coach admits Glasgow were 'tactically a bit off'

Glasgow attack coach Nigel Carolan admitted his side did not do enough to give themselves a chance of victory after they crashed to a 40-12 defeat against Sharks in Durban on Saturday.

The hosts led 13-7 at the break and then turned the screw on the Scots in the second half as they scored four unanswered tries in the final half-hour.

Carolan – leading the coaching team in South Africa in the absence of Franco Smith, who has a work visa issue – rued Warriors’ inability to follow up their home win over Bulls from the previous weekend.

“It’s a disappointing result, there’s no getting away from that,” he told the Glasgow website.

“We had a plan to move them around, and we only really managed to click into that plan at about the 38 or 39-minute mark.

“We kicked too much across the board, and we knew that there was going to be an onslaught coming when the Sharks emptied the bench.

“The difference was that last week against the Bulls, we’d put four tries in the bank and got ourselves in a great position before they turned to the bench. It’s very difficult to chase a game against a side that bring that much power.

“Tactically we were a bit off, and that was what made the difference.

“Our set-piece didn’t function and that cost us the momentum on six or seven occasions. We asked questions of their defence when we got that momentum behind us, but you can’t waste that many opportunities at this level.”

Carolan hopes Warriors can bounce back against Lions in Johannesburg next weekend.

“We’ll review the game on Monday and take the learning points out of our performance,” he said.

“We’ll also assess where a few boys are in terms of fitness – we’ve had a stomach bug in camp this week, and we obviously saw a few lads go off for various things.

“We’ll dust ourselves down and go again next week though, because we know we’ve got the performance within ourselves to get the right result.”