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Phone call from coach convinced Scotland centre to stay put
By Online Editors
Nick Grigg says his relationship with incoming Glasgow coach Danny Wilson was key to his decision to knock back moves away from Scotstoun.
The Scotland centre had penned a new two-year deal with Warriors after rejecting overtures from Wasps and La Rochelle.
The 27-year-old confirmed talks had taken place with his suitors but in the end he decided to stay put at a club he has already served for five years.
Wilson will take over from Dave Rennie at the end of the season and Grigg cannot wait to get started.
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The New Zealand-born midfielder – who has worked under Wilson with the national team – said: “I’m very excited about getting to stay on for another two years.
“Danny rang me up a few months ago and said he was keen for me to say. That’s exactly what you want to hear from the new coach coming in.
“I appreciated that and it made it an easy decision.
“Danny has played a big role in my decision. Obviously you want to get along with your head coach and I feel I have a good relationship with him.
“I know he used to coach at Cardiff and they had a really fast style of play, like we do here at Glasgow which is good. Personality-wise, I get on with in terms of sense of humour, so all those things came into it.
“There was rumours going around of other clubs being interested and there was communications with those clubs. Any player who comes off contract, there will be speculation on new offers.
“It was only a couple of chats between my agent and the clubs but nothing came of it.
“At the end of the day, staying with Glasgow was the right choice. They want me to be here, I want to stay.”
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"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"
I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.
But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.
Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.
"I'm afraid to say"
Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!
Go to commentsYou are a very horrible man Ojohn. Brain injury perhaps?
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