Glasgow Warriors reaction: 'Moments of brilliance but enormous amount of errors'

The positives were the four tries they scored – two in each half – and the fact they reduced their opponents to just four penalty kicks.

But that was offset by their poor discipline that saw two players, Josh McKay and Thomas Gordon, shown yellow cards throughout a disjointed performance.

The weather didn’t help on a squalid night when the rain was relentless but the end result was Warriors moving above Edinburgh into second place in the United Rugby Championship, enough to send the fans back out into the night happy.

Franco Smith was also not entirely sure whether his glass was half-full or empty, pleased with a fourth victory of the season but annoyed at some of the slackness in his side’s play.

He said: “I’m disappointed with some areas of our game but really delighted about the win. It was a difficult evening and difficult conditions.

“We had some moments of brilliance but also made an enormous amount of errors. I’m really happy for the boys. It’s a win and we’ll take that.

“Benetton played really well with ball in hand. We didn’t play that well tonight as we had lots of errors and I think the expectation around Scotstoun is growing. Maybe the guys didn’t want to disappoint so that’s why the errors creep in.

“It can be a changing room fix to our issues, there’s an eagerness and we’ve not played really well up to now from an attacking perspective. We haven’t had continuity in our squad and we need that now.”

Warriors did score four excellent tries. The first came from the boot of man-of-the match Stafford McDowall whose 50:22 earned Glasgow a line-out high up the park.

The ball was worked wide to Tom Jordan who fed McKay who steamed in to score.

The second try followed not long afterwards. This time Sebastian Cancelliere was the creator, the Argentine bursting through a hole in the Benetton defence to dot down.

Glasgow had to survive some extended Benetton pressure either side of the interval, especially when they twice went down to 14 men.

But some quick thinking by Cancelliere led to a third try that all but sealed the win. The Argentine took a quick line-out to McKay who passed to the impressive George Horne.

The scrum-half burst forward before passing to Cancelliere to score.

Horne claimed the fourth himself. By now stationed out on the wing after Sean Kennedy had replaced Cancelliere, he took possession from a McKay pass and beat his marker before scoring.

Benetton had actually gone 6-0 in front through a pair of Tomas Albornoz penalties, who also saw a drop goal attempt drift only narrowly wide before atoning with another kick from the tee before the half was out.

Jacob Umaga’s penalty provided Benetton’s only points in the second half as they ran out of steam against a Glasgow defence that wouldn’t wilt.

A brilliant covering tackle from Matt Fagerson summed up their spirit, the back-rower making Marco Zanon drop the ball on the line just when it looked a certainty that he would score.

It was far from perfect from Glasgow but the points – if not the performances – keep totting up.