Former Glasgow Warriors boss Danny Wilson is looking forward to facing his former side in the Investec Champions Cup round of 16 on Friday night.
It is almost two years since Wilson was sacked after Glasgow suffered a humiliating 76-14 defeat to Leinster in a URC quarter-final.
The Welshman, who joined Harlequins in the summer after spending the second half of last season working with Leicester Tigers, was keen to stress he has moved on as he reflected on his tenure at Scotstoun
Wilson said: “I went to Glasgow in a difficult time with the Covid situation but I am proud of what we slowly built there.
“We were in a different stage with a lot of players retiring and huge budget cuts at the time. We slowly built that back up and I always said it was a three-year project.
“I didn’t get to the third year of that plain and simply due to the Leinster quarter-final.”
He admits agreeing to a Scottish Rugby request to switch Glasgow’s final match of the regular season, against Edinburgh, from Scotstoun to Murrayfield, was the beginning of his undoing.
That ‘home’ match came after back-to-back defeats by Stormers and Bulls in South Africa, and meant Glasgow went to Leinster without a win in four games. After such a promising season, that dip in form sent them to face Leinster at the RDS.
Leinster had lost the Champions Cup final to La Rochelle the week before. It was a perfect storm that ended with a 12-try humbling that cost Wilson his job.
He added: “One of my performance goals was to make the knockout stage of the league and we did that, but that result was an embarrassing result for everyone concerned.
“Ultimately in a very cut-throat world that cost me my job. I’m fully aware of that one game cost me dearly.
“That’s sport. I’ve moved on. I had a brilliant experience at Leicester last year and made the top four of the Premiership, and I’m really enjoying my time at Quins.”
Whether from his time at Scotstoun or while working as one of Gregor Townsend’s assistant coaches, Wilson knows most of the current Glasgow squad well. But he doesn’t expect to gain much of an advantage from that on Friday.
“I think we both know each other really well,” Wilson said.
“I coached there for two years with Glasgow and another two-and-a-half years with Scotland so I’ve worked with a number of these players for a long period of time. As much as I know about them, they know about me.”
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Wilson knows first-hand this Glasgow side is packed with top-class players and believes Quins – who beat Finn Russell’s Bath 40-36 in a thriller at The Stoop on Saturday – will need to be at their best to overcome Franco Smith’s side.
He continued: “There’s so much quality in that team.
“They’ve invested a huge amount of money in that squad – they've built a lot of depth and signed a lot of internationals. That has slowly built over the last three or four years, since Covid.
“I signed Sione Tuipulotu, Jack Dempsey and Josh McKay – they were three signings I was really pleased with when they came to Glasgow. They are guys who have been playing really well for Glasgow, and two of them for Scotland.
“When you have got that many internationals with that much quality in your squad, they are extremely dangerous.
“We’ll have to be right on top of our game to give ourselves an opportunity.”
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