Franco Smith admitted Glasgow lost their way as the Bulls came on strong to end their United Rugby Championship hopes in Saturday’s semi-final at Murrayfield.
Warriors raced into a 21-3 lead in the opening 25 minutes through a double from Kyle Steyn and a penalty try.
But Bulls roared back to claim a 22-21 victory as Johan Grobbelaar notched before the break, and Embrose Papier and Francois Klopper pushed over in the third quarter while Glasgow lock Scott Cummings was in the sin-bin.
Bulls stand-off Handre Pollard missed three penalties in the final quarter but the South Africans never looked in danger of letting their one-point lead slip as they set up a showdown with Leinster or Stormers in the final on June 20.
“We didn’t convert our opportunities, but there are two sides to it,” said Glasgow head coach Smith.
“From a Bulls perspective, if you go in 21-10 down (at half-time), you come out with a different, desperate mindset. I thought they dealt with the first 10 minutes after half-time better. That obviously led to them being in our rear-view mirror and we started looking more at the scoreboard.
“That’s normal in all sports. If you’re the log leader, if you’re leading the game, or even if you’re a cyclist, you start worrying about not winning. That influences the outcome, especially if you’re playing against a team who know how to play in the last 20 minutes.
“But we will have to take what we’ve learned from tonight. We said that after the Toulon game (a Champions Cup quarter-final defeat), we are now a team that can set ourselves up for big moments, but we must learn – it’s across all Scottish teams – we need to go one step further now.”
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Although he said his disappointment level was “high” after a deflating end to the campaign, Smith took some solace from reaching the quarter-final of the Champions Cup and topping the regulation URC table.
“Last year I stood here at this stage and I was basically in tears and emotional about (the prospect of having) a small squad of 38 players with not enough foreign internationals to back up our Scottish internationals,” he said.
“The expectation was big and we had a tough draw with the schedule changing. Despite that, we ended up top of the log. We ended up having all these home advantages and we’ve done extraordinarily well in Europe.
“There’s obviously still room for improvement. I hope that the disappointment is the main ingredient now for next season.”
