Glasgow will find it tough to defend their URC title this season, according to former centre Richie Vernon.

The ex-Scotland international won the championship with Warriors in 2015 and says having a target on your back as champions is a heavy weight to bear.

“The problem with that is when we did win it, ‘how do we back it up?’,” Vernon told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland.

“We had made history and it then was a case of we had a target on our back and all these brilliant teams start trying to chase you. That was a different challenge.

“We didn’t win the league the next season so we didn’t cope with it as well as we should have.”

Glasgow made the semi-finals as defending champions in 2016 before losing to eventual winners Connacht.

But Vernon, who won played 96 times across two spells with the club, believes there is a difference between their win in 2015 and his old club’s success last season.

“We’d battled for years and got so close so many times so when we did win we really felt that we’d earned it,” he said.

“That’s not to say that Glasgow today haven’t. They were the best team last season with two fantastic results in the play-offs.

“But I don’t know if their mindset changed a little bit by finishing fourth in the league campaign. They came through some difficult games but they were surprise results in the end.”