Bulls vs Glasgow: 'If you lose in a final, there’s no coming back from it'

Zander Fagerson is hoping “years of hard work” pay off in the shape of silverware when Glasgow face the Bulls in Saturday’s United Rugby Championship final in Pretoria.

The 28-year-old prop was on the periphery of the squad as a teenager when Warriors won their last trophy, the Pro 12 title, in 2015.

Now one of Glasgow’s senior players, Scotland mainstay Fagerson would love to guide his team to some long-awaited glory in South Africa.

“It would be the culmination of a lot of years of hard work to get to this point,” he said. “It would be the icing on the cake.

“We’re enjoying the week, but we won’t get ahead of ourselves. We have to go out there and do it at the weekend, we’ve got to make sure we dot our i’s and cross our t’s.

“We need to treat is a normal week, stick to our processes and go from there.”

Glasgow lost 40-34 away to the Bulls in the regulation season last month, but they go into the defining match of their campaign buoyed by rousing victories at home to the Stormers and away to Munster in the quarter-final and semi-final over the past two weekends.

“I was really proud of the boys the last two weeks in how they defended and how they played for each other and it’s going to take the same again this week,” said Fagerson.

“The Bulls took their chances against us the last time. They’re a well-drilled team and they’ve got some really dangerous players so we need to make sure we don’t give them as many opportunities.”

Saturday’s match at Loftus Versfeld will be Glasgow’s second final in 13 months after they lost to Toulon in the Challenge Cup showpiece in Dublin last year.

“Once you play in a final and get that big-game exposure, you learn a lot from it,” said Fagerson.

“I think we’ve got a bit more maturity as a team now. If you lose in a final, there’s no coming back from it.

“We didn’t stick to our game plan and play the full 80 minutes of that game and we came up second best, so we’ve got to make sure we leave everything out there this weekend because there’s no second chances.”