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Glaws win final friendly, without impressing

AA - first try
By Cherry Picker August 31 2008
Gloucester finished their pre-season preparations with a 30-8 home win over Glasgow Warriors, but a lot of things need to be sorted in the next week before Leicester Tigers arrive at Kingsholm for the first Guinness Premiership game. We know it was a friendly, we know it's next week that counts and we know Glaws can play better - but this game showed up a lot of worries for Dean Ryan.

Just days after claiming that Glaws are now regarded as one of the best clubs in Europe, coach Ryan was brought down to earh by a poor first-half performance which saw his team behind 8-3 at the break.
But in front of more than 8,000 fans - not bad for a friendly - Glaws improved in the second half and scored three tries to finish 30-8 winners.
Yes, James Simpson-Daniel returned to show he's not far from being ready, the front row played well, and Ryan Lamb kicked perfectly. But it wasn't the finished article Ryan and the fans would want.
Anthony Allen, Rory Lawson and Olly Morgan scored the tries.

GLOUCESTER: Olly Morgan; Iain Balshaw, Mike Tindall (capt), Anthony Allen, Lesley Vainikolo, Ryan Lamb, Gareth Cooper; Nick Wood (Nieto 68), Andy Titterrell, Carlos Nieto, Will James, Alex Brown, Peter Buxton, Andy Hazell, Luke Narraway. Reps: Olivier Azam (Titterrell 64), Dave Young (Nieto 56), Marco Bortolami (Brown 48), Alasdair Strokosch (Buxton blood 19/29, Hazell 48), Rory Lawson (Cooper 58), Willie Walker, Matthew Watkins (Tindall 77), James Simpson-Daniel (Balshaw 56), Apo Satala (Buxton 66).

 Meanwhile, Ryan has told BBC Glos that he feels the GP mid-table teams are closing the gap on the top teams. He said: "The important thing this year is the number of sides with greater depth.
"Sides like Harlequins, Saracens and Worcester have all added significantly. It makes it much harder to predict who will make the play-off places."
It will be even more difficult to make predictions if Glaws donl;t improve by the weekend. 

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