A passing train driver can forget any hopes of being on Richard Cockerill’s Christmas card list after playing a key role in Saturday’s Glasgow Warriors-Edinburgh Guinness PRO14 derby clash at Scotstoun.
The visitors were leading 10-6 with 45 seconds left of the first half in the inter-city encounter when scrum-half Nic Groom found himself at the heart of a bizarre incident.
The South African mistook the horn of a train chugging past the arena’s North Stand for the half-time buzzer and kicked the ball out of play deep in Edinburgh territory.
It proved a costly error.
Ross Thompson kicked a penalty from the resultant line-out, and momentum stayed with Glasgow as they helped themselves to another penalty and two converted tries in the third quarter, eventually running out 23-22 winners.
“I dropped the train driver a WhatsApp and told him to make sure he smashes that horn when he drives past!” laughed home coach Danny Wilson after the game.
Unsurprisingly, Cockerill was in no mood to laud all things ScotRail after the game. Of Groom, he said: “He thought that the train’s horn was the half-time horn, which he’s used to from the southern hemisphere even though he’s been here a couple of years.
“It was a bit frustrating, because we had managed a good score and were looking to go in further ahead at half-time, but we give them free territory for no reason and end up being punished. We conceded three points and lost by one.
“It’s not Groomy’s fault, but it’s those tiny moments, and there were lots of them in the first 20 minutes after half-time as well, where we didn’t look after the ball well enough and didn’t do the basics well enough.”
Edinburgh still had a chance to win it after Eroni Sau crossed with 90 seconds remaining.
But Jaco van der Walt missed with the conversion attempt.
The victory allowed Glasgow to climb off the bottom of Conference A table, moving into fourth above the Dragons.
