URC final: How are Glasgow Warriors getting to South Africa? (2024)

Published

20 June 2024

URC Grand Final: Bulls v Glasgow Warriors

Venue: Loftus Versfeld Stadium, Pretoria, South Africa Date: Saturday, 22 June Time: 17:00 BST

Coverage: Follow live coverage on the BBC Sport website & app and on BBC Sounds

While Glasgow Warriors' players celebrated on the pitch on Saturday, having just secured a fourth URC final appearance in 10 years, one man began trying to solve the biggest problem of his career.

John Manson, Warriors' head of rugby operations and team manager, had just a few hours to figure out how to get 47 players and staff over 8,500 miles from Scotstoun to South Africa for the showpiece seven days later.

While the 'The Rattlin' Bog' - Glasgow's traditional post-win chant - echoed around the Thom*ond Park changing room after the win over Munster, Manson sat in a corner, laptop open, frantically searching for last-minute flights.

"We did this trip a five or six weeks ago when we played the Lions and the Bulls," he explains.

"I planned that trip 12 months ago - the training facilities, the flights, hotels. We've had to organise that same trip in 18 hours this time."

Alongside a sports travel company, once-capped Scotland prop Manson worked through the night to sort out Glasgow's travel.

Getting all 47 members of the squad and backroom team on one flight was impossible, though.

The group was split up, flying out on different days from Glasgow, via Dubai, to Johannesburg.

"I got on the laptop at home at 01:00 on Sunday and until 04:00 we were booking flights," Manson says.

"We had to go through the system and book and pay for them one at a time until we got everybody on the flights."

But there was another problem.

"We want to get the boys there in the best possible conditions. That means trying to get them business-class flights.

"There's two major issues to that. One is availability at such short notice. Second, is the price. If they are available at all, they will be between £8,000-£10,000 a ticket. So there's a budget constraint there as well."

Naturally, there's a scramble for those business-class seats.

So how do you pick who gets the golden tickets? Is it pot luck? Not really. In this case, size matters.

"We can't sit Richie Gray in economy - he's 6ft 10in," Manson says.

"Oli Kebble and Zander fa*gerson – 130kgs each - we physically can't sit these boys in economy. It's not possible.

"We try and strike a balance. We get as many boys as we can, between availability and budget, in business-class. The rest of them, we try and get extra leg-room seats and get everybody there as comfortably as we can.

"The staff just take the hit, they never get upgraded."

Some won't be happy with Manson's selections. Accusations of favouritism abound.

"You try and do your best for everybody, but you are going to annoy 50% of the boys," he says.

"I've been doing this a long time now, my skin's pretty thick, so I can make a decision and I can go with it. It doesn't really bother me.

"The boys trust me and the staff trust me. They know they may not get what they want, but they know that I'm trying my best for them."

Thanks to Glasgow's recent travels, relationships have been formed with hotels and training bases in South Africa.

Both the Monte Casino Hotel and St Stithians College were tapped up last week about a possible booking.

And what about kit? The GPS trackers, the water bottles, the bibs?

"We just allocated everybody an additional bag, whether that be the match kit or the balls or the cones or the medical bags, whatever it was - somebody checked in an extra bit of kit.

"It has all arrived, everything's here that we need."

Job done, panic over. But were there any mixed emotions after the full-time whistle on Saturday?

"Sure, the next part was a pain in the backside for 48 hours, but we wouldn't swap that for the world," says Manson.

Related Topics