GLASGOW’s fine form in European rugby this season can inspire Scotland when they kick off their Six Nations Championship campaign against Ireland today, according to Fraser Brown.

In fact the Warriors hooker, who starts for the Scots in place of Ross Ford, is sure that the whole national squad can take heart from their successes at club level. At the same time as Glasgow were qualifying for the last eight of the Champions Cup for the first time, Edinburgh made it through to the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup - and the squad also includes players from Saracens and Toulouse, who have joined Brown’s team in the European knockout stages.

“It’s not that difficult, to be honest,” Brown said when he was asked how hard it would be for Scotland to pick up where the Warriors have left off. “The national coaches watch all our domestic games, and if guys are playing well at the club it’s easier to come into camp and just carry on that form.

“When we met up last Sunday, Glasgow had just come off the back of that win against Leicester, Edinburgh had just qualified, and the boys playing for Saracens and in France had come off the back of good wins and progression as well. It actually makes it easier coming into camp when you’ve got a lot of guys who are playing well and on form. It just makes it a nicer environment.

“Gregor Townsend and the coaches at Glasgow instil a confidence in you to go out and play. That doesn’t mean throwing the ball out the back door and doing silly offloads, it means running hard and doing the hard yards.

“The same philosophy stands true here. Everyone feels they can go at first receiver if they have to. It’s having that confidence in your own ability so you can do something to influence the game.”

With nine Glasgow players in the starting line-up and another four on the bench, it should be no surprise that the mood in the Scotland camp is very similar to the one at Scotstoun. “It certainly helps having that familiarity,” Brown continued. “We’ve done so much training here that we’re ironing out those tiny details.

“It certainly helps that a lot of us play together every single week, but the time that we spend training together in camp helps too, while a lot of time away from the pitch is spent looking at laptops or walking through stuff together. It helps, but the whole forward pack is in a really good place and we all know our jobs and we all know our roles.”

It has not all been good news for the Warriors this season, of course - they have already lost three times to Munster, who have four players in Ireland’s starting 15 and another three on the bench. But rather than be downhearted by those results, Brown thinks they will spur him and his team-mates on.

“From a Glasgow point of view we’ve been on the wrong side of the results in those battles, so I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t mean anything, because it does. There’s an added impetus.

“There’s Scotland versus Ireland most weeks in the Pro12. It definitely adds a bit of spice, because you know how the other team operates better than you would with other nations. It adds a little bit of extra excitement when you go into those collisions, because you know the opposition so well.”