Glasgow Warriors stun Bulls to win United Rugby Championship title

PRETORIA - Glasgow Warriors produced a storming second half display to come from 13 points behind and beat hosts Bulls 21-16 in Saturday’s United Rugby Championship final at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.

Warriors scored three tries to one for the Bulls, to secure a rare title for Scottish rugby and silence a partisan 50,388-strong crowd.

Warriors, whose only previous title was the PRO-12 competition in 2015, were 13-0 down on the stroke of halftime but engineered a sterling comeback.

The Bulls had opened with two penalties from Johan Goosen before loose forward Marco van Staden mauled over for a try to secure a comfortable advantage after 25 minutes for the South African side.

But a minute before the break Scott Cummings went over at the end of a maul for Warriors’ first points, converted by George Horne.

After the break, Goosen made it 16-7 to the Bulls with another penalty before the Scots took control, with George Turner going over after another maul, which had proven a major weapon for the Warriors this season.

Huw Jones then scored as the Glaswegians went ahead for the first time in the game with a darting try, which Horne converted for a deserved 21-16 victory.

The Bulls were seeking to become the first team to take major rugby titles in separate hemispheres.

They were three-time Super Rugby champions in 2007, 2009 and 2010 when South African franchises competed in the southern hemisphere competition against their counterparts from Australia and New Zealand.

South African teams first contested in the URC in 2021, when the Stormers beat the Bulls in the final in Cape Town.

Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld was full hours before kickoff as supporters arrived early to watch the television broadcast, on the stadium’s giant screen, of the Springboks’ 41-13 win over Wales in their test at Twickenham on Saturday. REUTERS