Game Over the Team Have Little to Play for but for the Coach, a Huge Challenge Lies Ahead, Reports Alasdair Reid

Summary

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IF the cloud that hung over Parkhead on Wednesday morning was only metaphorical, the one that sat above Whitecraigs rugby club, a few miles to the south-west, was all too grey and grimly real. Yet as the rain trickled down the windows of the tidy clubhouse that has been Glasgow's training base this season, Hugh Campbell shared common ground with Martin O'Neill in the empathy of knowing that Glasgow's season, like Celtic's, has become a domestic mopping-up exercise after the ending of their European dreams.

That much was all but mathematically confirmed a week ago, in the dying seconds of a match against Llanelli at Hughenden when Dan Parks' desperate crossfield kick failed to find a Scottish target, letting the Welsh side off the hook and allowing them to head back to the Valleys with a 29-16 victory in their swag bag. Glasgow's third straight defeat in the Heineken Cup virtually ended Scottish interest in the competition, coupled as it was with Edinburgh's similar fate at Newcastle, although the terms of their surrender still oblige them to make formal visits to Llanelli and Northampton, by way of gruesome and now pointless penance.

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Extract

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Game Over the Team Have Little to Play for but for the Coach, a Huge Challenge Lies Ahead, Reports Alasdair Reid

The first part of that punishment takes place today as Glasgow head to Stradey Park for the return match against Llanelli's Scarlets. So as Campbell considered his strategies for that match in the Whitecraigs lounge, his dejected squad assembled in an adjacent room to mull over their targets for th...

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