George Horne challenges Glasgow to display mindset of champions in title defence

George Horne has challenged Glasgow to display the mindset of champions all over again as they bid to defend their United Rugby Championship title.

The scrum-half believes last year’s success can have an inspirational effect on his side as they prepare for Friday’s quarter-final at home to Stormers.

But he insisted they can take nothing for granted as they try to successfully negotiate the play-offs for the second year running.

“We’d done a lot of losing big games in the past and that kind of probably gave us the experience to work out what was needed to be done to win it last year,” said Horne.

“But you can’t just expect that to happen again, we’ve got to make it happen. We’ve got a good, experienced team now. We’ve been there and done it, but it’s going to have to be done again if we want to keep going further in this competition.”

Glasgow won 27-10 at home to Stormers at the same stage of last year’s championship before pulling off famous away wins over Munster and Bulls to claim the silverware.

“We can learn from it, obviously playing the same opposition, but it means nothing in terms of going into this year,” Horne said of the upcoming visit from the South Africans. “We’ve still got to put out a performance this weekend.

“We can’t just rest on the laurels of what we did last year. We’ll use the experience of winning those tight games, but we know we’ve got to turn up on Friday if we’re going to do it again.”

Glasgow go into the play-offs on the back of a three-game losing streak and having lost four of their last five matches.

Horne admitted their form was “not ideal” but was heartened by the way they performed in their most recent outing, a 13-5 defeat at Leinster on the final day of the regulation campaign.

“Look, it’s not ideal, we want to win every game we go out there and play,” he said. “I think from a performance point of view, we were well off it against Treviso (in a 33-7 defeat), but certainly against Leinster, we showed what we’re about.

“Going into this part of the season, you definitely want to be at your best and we’ve maybe not hit those straps yet, but hopefully we’ve left it until the right time.”

Glasgow announced on Tuesday that Sebastian Cancelliere, JP du Preez, Sean Kennedy and Facundo Cordero would be leaving the club this summer along with Henco Venter, Tom Jordan and Jack Mann, whose impending moves to Brive, Bristol and Gloucester respectively had already been confirmed earlier in the season.