Given that Glasgow Warriors had previously managed just one win in seven knock-out games played since their 2015 Pro12 success, the Scotstoun side’s march to the Challenge Cup final - where they will play Toulon - is worthy of all the praise which has been sent in that direction.
Saturday’s 35-17 win was particularly impressive, achieved away from home in front of a hostile crowd, against a Scarlets team which threw the kitchen sink at them. Warriors were clearly flustered for most of the first half, then took their chances at the start of the second half before defending resolutely to see out the win.
It was not their most polished performance but a tremendous achievement, and the challenge now is to back it up on Saturday night when Warriors host Munster in the play-off quarter-finals of the United Rugby Championship.
The emotional, psychological and physical toll of the Scarlets match will be huge, and Scottish teams have a habit of clearing one hurdle with a Herculean leap only to crash into the next one and end up a crumpled heap on the floor.
Jack Dempsey believes the key to Warriors avoiding that kind of disappointment this week lies with one of head coach Franco Smith’s favourite “dad jokes”.
The Australian-born No.8 led the charge for Warriors in Saturday’s win and was typically honest afterwards in his assessment of where the team sit in their evolutionary process from “also- rans” to “serious contenders” in both the URC and Europe.
“Franco is a bit of a dad-joke-operator so every week when we beat Zebre or we beat Ulster or whoever we beat, he comes in on Monday and we all stand up and give each other a round of applause, and then he says: ‘Right, next job’,” Dempsey explained.
“You laugh at it at the start, and then it becomes a bit cringy or whatever, but the message is there – that you don’t win anything until you’ve won something. That’s something we’ve all bought into – definitely I’ve bought into it.
“We celebrate the wins now, have a beer in the changing room under the stand, then we move on to the next job on Monday. That’s the mentality.
“I’m not the type of guy to sugar coat anything, and I think there was a lot of guys who had not played at that stage before, and I think it got to them a bit,” he added, when asked about the team’s performance against Scarlets.
“The silver lining is that we’ve got it out of the system, so it doesn’t hit us next week when we play Munster, or the week after, or the week after that in the final.
“That’s the whole point of getting experience on big stages – you never know what’s going to be thrown at you, and I think the second half against Scarlets showed what we’re made of.
“The message at half time was: Don’t panic. It was obvious that a lot of guys were going out of the system or not trusting the system – the process – and that’s what sport comes down to. You get to this point by doing certain things and we weren’t doing them, so that’s what the message was: Everyone calm down and relax. And we did that and went back to what we’re good at.
“We could easily have folded, gone into our shell, called it a learning experience and had a look to next year – but we dug deep and remembered what makes us a great team, and we pulled it out in the end.”
As serious as Dempsey was about keeping focused, he also encouraged his team-mates to enjoy the challenge of competing for silverware on two fronts.
“I think this year, since day one when Franco came in, there has been something kind of growing,” he said. “There have been ups and downs, but this is something I think we deserve because of the way everyone has worked for each other.
“To get that result in a pretty hostile environment – I’ve played here before and it wasn’t anything like that – just adds another layer to the story. So, we’ll put that aside now and move on in the league.
“We beat Munster recently at their joint and the year before we played them at home, so we are two on the trot against them, but they are a different beast now.
“I think the last game against us at Thomond Park was a wake-up call for them and they bounced back really hard. They had a good fightback draw against the Sharks recently and some big performances, so they are on a roll as well.
“Now they are coming off a rest week because they didn’t have this game in Europe and we’ve got five days to prepare, so it is going to be a tough one.
“As somebody coming in from the outside, I didn’t know the history between the two clubs, but I know now it is very rich and the games are very physical. That’s why you play – to be involved in these sorts of games against these teams. You want to be there and be a part of it.”
