Why Glasgow Warriors were left with little option over Danny Wilson sacking

In the end, Glasgow Warriors could not risk further alienating their supporter base.

The club’s more strident fans had taken to social media in recent days to express their dissatisfaction with the direction in which the club was going under Danny Wilson’s stewardship.

You suspect there has been little rush to renew season tickets, a key consideration for a club who have become accustomed to success in recent seasons and who regularly sell out Scotstoun.

Saturday’s humiliation against Leinster in Dublin was the final straw and the head coach was shown the door on Monday.

A statement issued just before 4pm was fair in its praise of Wilson and you hope for his sake that the terms of his severance were equally generous with a year left on his deal.

Wilson is a decent and likeable man but it would be hard for any coach to survive a 76-14 shellacking in the professional era, even when it comes at the hands of the four-in-a-row champions.

In truth, the seeds of Wilson’s demise were sown two weeks earlier at Murrayfield where a pallid Glasgow went down 28-11 to Edinburgh in a winner-takes-all inter-city derby.

At stake was the 1872 Cup, the Scottish-Italian Shield and a place in next season’s Heineken Champions Cup. Edinburgh scooped the lot - and that was despite Glasgow going into the game with a 13-point advantage from the 1872 Cup first leg.

The failure to qualify for the Champions Cup was particularly hard to take. The last time Glasgow were not involved in European club rugby’s elite tournament was the 2006-07 season when Edinburgh and the long defunct Border Reivers pipped them for places.

Of course, there are now only two pro teams remaining in the Scottish game and they are inevitably measured against each other. And