On a wintry Friday night by the Clyde, Glasgow Warriors and Newport Gwent Dragons played out a 16-all draw. So few turned up that they could have counted them, one by one.
They declared the official attendance at 1,709, hardly enough to qualify as a crowd. The lonely Warriors were about to get lonelier. One month later, when Treviso paid their annual visit, the number at Scotstoun had shrunk to 1,369.
The home club were fighting to pay their way in hostile surroundings, eking out an existence in a city where two football clubs commanded crowds of around 100,000 between them.The Dragons came...