Inverness-born Scotland rugby international Jamie Dobie says Glasgow Warriors can build on opening-day victory over Leinster to surpass 2022/23 season's successes
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Inverness professional rugby player Jamie Dobie says it is important that the Glasgow Warriors build on their opening day victory over Leinster.
Dobie, who started out as a mini at Highland Rugby Club, started at Scotstoun as the Warriors ran out 43-25 winners.
Tries from Josh McKay, Sebastian Cancelliere, Huw Jones, Angus Fraser, George Horne – on his 100th appearance for the club – and Johnny Matthews, as well as a penalty try, got Glasgow off to the perfect start in the 2023/24 season.
It is a sign that the club are picking up where they left off in the 2022/23 campaign, when they went unbeaten at home through the regular season of the United Rugby Championship, only losing to Munster in the quarter finals when they were reduced to 14 men.
The Warriors also made it all the way to the final of the European Challenge Cup, where they lost to Toulon at the Aviva Stadium in Ireland.
Given it was head coach Franco Smith’s first year in charge at Scotstoun, it was a season that exceeded expectations.
After such a positive start to this season on Sunday, then, Dobie is optimistic over Glasgow’s chances of another positive year.
“I think it was massively important to start this season off with a win,” he said.
“We had a really strong season last year and I think we caught a few teams by surprise, but that means the expectation on this team now is higher.
“There was no better team to get a win like that against than Leinster – who have dominated the regular season of this league in recent years.
“We fronted up extremely well, and getting a win like that is a bit of a statement.
“We need to keep building on that momentum now, there’s no point starting with such a strong win if we can’t back it up. That’s the next challenge for us.
“I’m extremely proud of the performance. There were a couple of moments there where the momentum got away from us, and it would have been easy for a team like Leinster to run away with it – so to dig deep shows how far we’ve come.
“It has been a long time since that quarter final against Munster which hurt us a lot, so it gives us that platform to build now.
“The way that the league is structured this year, it’s a lot of back-to-back games, so we can build on this.
“Whether home or away we know we can put in performances, because we’ve got the squad and the depth to do it. We will back each other up the whole way.”
