Josh McKay insists Glasgow kick off the URC campaign primed to deliver for Franco Smith rather than learning on the job like last time.
The full-back and his Warriors team-mates face Leinster at Scotstoun today in their league opener. Head coach Smith had just arrived in Glasgow when last term began. And with games against Worcester and Ulster being postponed, the team only had one pre-season friendly – against semi-pro outfit Ayrshire Bulls – before the competitive action started.
A lack of match practice showed in the opening months, especially on the road where a first win did not come until December. This time, though, they have had clashes with Zebre as well as Ulster. And Kiwi McKay said: “The biggest positive has been that now we’ve had that growth under Franco over last season.
“He came into pre-season late, so it took us a while to find our feet last season, whereas now we know how we want to play.
“When we came in this pre-season, there wasn’t as much fine-tuning needed to be done. Everyone knows the skeleton of how we
want to play, how we want to defend, how we want to attack and move the ball.”
A broken foot saw McKay miss out on the end of last season when the team reached the Challenge Cup Final – losing to Toulon – and the URC last eight.
He made his comeback in that friendly defeat to Ulster a fortnight ago and is part of a team that will
be favourites to win today given seven members of Scotland’s World Cup squad are in the 23.
Forwards Rory Darge, Zander Fagerson, Johnny Matthews as well as Scott Cummings join backs
Huw Jones, Kyle Steyn and George Horne as the seven.
But Irish outfit Leinster have greater depth than any other side in the league.
Although they will be without their international contingent, McKay is taking nothing for granted.
He said: “I’d say Leinster are at a stage now where it doesn’t really matter who steps out of the starting line-up – the next man who steps in knows the job he’s got to do.
“They’re well drilled. We’ve got a lot of respect for the fact they’ve built a big squad and those boys can step in and step up.”
