Glasgow Warriors travel to take on Cardiff at the Arms Park for the first time in two and a half years. Kevin Millar previews the match.
KO 1935 at Cardiff Arms Park, Friday October 4, Live on Premier Sports 2
- Glasgow have only played Cardiff in Cardiff once in the last five years. That means that there are 13 members of the Warriors’ lineup that have never played at the Arms Park.
- Since they beat Glasgow towards the end of the 2021/22 season, Cardiff have played 20 home league games in which they have registered seven wins – Benetton, Dragons (twice), Munster, Stormers (twice) and Zebre.
- Prior to the 2009/10 season, the Warriors only managed a solitary victory in Cardiff – from 11 attempts. Since then, they have won ten of the 14 matches they have played in the Welsh capital (including one against the Dragons in the Rainbow Cup).
- Jack of all trades, Matt Fagerson, is the Warrior to Watch.
The teams
Head to heads
Glasgow greetings
There’s a debut in the offing for former Exeter prop, Patrick Schickerling. He will be the 10th different player to feature at tighthead for the Warriors in their last 75 matches.
Matchday milestones
Jack Dempsey will make his 50th start for Glasgow since arriving from Australia at the beginning of the 2021/22 campaign.
There is a relatively rare outing from the bench for Richie Gray, who has the highest percentage of starts (86.4% of his appearances) among the tight five players in the current squad.
Only Rory Darge (90.0%) and Jack Dempsey (98.0%) have a higher percentage among all forwards.
Warrior to Watch
Matt Fagerson demonstrates his flexibility by moving over to openside this week. That means he will have started in all three back-row positions in the Warriors’ opening three fixtures of this season.
He is an energetic, powerful presence in the back row and he can pretty much do it all. That is a huge benefit for the coaches who can rotate players, changing the composition of the breakaway trio and still know that Fagerson will adapt his contributions to balance things out.
Last time out, against Benetton at number eight, his focus was on being a dominant carrier. He made more runs and metres with ball in hand than anyone else in the Glasgow lineup, while scoring a try and creating another.
With Jack Dempsey restored to the lineup, Fagerson’s role will shift a bit away from carrying and towards more defensive contributions and rucks hit.
No matter what is required of him, Zander’s wee brother will put in a big shift as one of the most important players in the current Warriors’ squad.
URC form
Track record…
…away to Cardiff in the PRO12/PRO14/URC era:
- Eight wins
- Two losses
- Three try bonus points
- Two losing bonus points
- 37 points out of a possible 50 (74%)
- Glasgow have also won one and lost one in the Champions Cup in Cardiff during this period.
Previous match-up v Cardiff in Cardiff
Officials
Referee: Morne Ferreira (SARU, 11th league game); Assistants: Rhys Jones and Gareth Newman (both WRU); TMO: Griffon Colby (SARU)
Mr Ferreira’s record for 2023/24:
- Matches – 10
- Average penalty count – 19.4 per game
- Home side penalties conceded percentage – 51.5%
- Average card count – 0.8 per game
- Penalties per card – 24.2
Making his Warriors’ debut, Mr Ferreira will be the sixth South African referee to take charge of a Glasgow fixture.
The Pretoria native only has a couple of previous outings anywhere in the UK on his CV – once at Scarlets and once at Ospreys, so hopefully conditions don’t come as too much of a shock to him!
His tendencies are towards a relatively low penalty count – at least for an inexperienced referee – and a very low card count by any standards.
That could be handy for Glasgow, having coughed up seven yellow cards in their last seven away fixtures.
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