Glasgow Warriors' wrecking ball mimics legendary England trio - and the damaging mentality that costs teams

We all tend to watch and judge matches from a partisan point of view. So, last Saturday's game was triumphant.

Glasgow Warriors played magnificently, with courage, skill and intelligence to defeat Bulls and win the URC Grand Final. To have been outplayed for most of the first half, finding themselves 13-0 down with half-time in sight, then scoring a try, turning round and taking control of the second half, it was all magnificent, and nobody could doubt that their victory was thoroughly deserved,

The last three weeks with wins against the Stormers at Scotstoun, Munster in Limerick and now the Bulls in Pretoria - who can doubt that this is the best we have had from a Scottish club? One that imposed its will on the opposition. Best of all, nobody could say it was a fluke.

Franco Smith and Kyle Steyn are pictured at the Glasgow Warriors homecoming event at Scotstoun Stadium after winning the United Rugby Championship Grand Final against Vodacom Bulls in South Africa.

Look at it however from the other side, and no doubt that are Bulls supporters and South African journalists who will say the Bulls blew it. They dominated the match for more than the first half-hour, got themselves into a position from which they probably should have won, and then lost. Shameful, really, to lose their grip on the game like that. A bit soft, perhaps.

Well, that's a charge that has often been directed at Glasgow, Edinburgh and been more brutally at Scotland. Look, for instance, at this year's Six Nations and the games against France and Italy, both lost when we surrendered - to use a hard word - what should have been a winning position.

Forget, for the moment, a probably good last-minute try against France which would have rescued victory if it hadn't, perhaps wrongly, been disallowed. Did these matches offer evidence of mental frailty? The assertion was often made.

It seemed to me in both games that we made the mistake of trying to protect a lead rather than extending it. Perhaps that is what the Bulls also did last Saturday? The truth is it is sometimes easier to come from behind and win than to hold on to a lead. Cricket writers sometimes speak of a batsman going into his shell and in rugby and football that is just what a team in the lead often does.

There is the feeling, we're in control - don't let it slip. It is subconscious, but often damaging.

Head coach Franco Smith has been rightly praised for his work with Glasgow. I suspect he would say that while he can prepare the players to take the opportunity, it is they who seize it.

There wasn't a single weakness in Glasgow, from 15 with Josh McKay's fielding of the high ball and ability to run it back, all the way through to the team.

Zander Fageron, unusually for a tight-head prop these days, again played the full eighty minutes; magnificent. His performance had old front-row men declaring him Scotland's greatest-ever tight-head prop. Greater than Sandi Carmichael and Iain Milne? One is reluctant to say yes, content however to say they were the greatest of the amateur era as Fagerson is of the professional one.

Glasgow's back row were also tremendous: Matt Fagerson, Jack Dempsey, Rory Darge. I've always admired the younger Fagerson, and I reckon now that, remarkable as Jamie Ritchie is, this Glasgow trio is Scotland's best back-row now.

There's some resemblance to England's famous World Cup winning trio: Richard Hill, Lawrence Dallaglio, and Neil Back. Hill, it was commonly thought, was the most important of them, a player who never did the wrong thing. He was also the least noticed, just as Matt Fagerson is in this Glasgow team.

You only fully realize the value of such players when you can watch everything they do throughout a match, something impossible when you throughout a match. Something that is impossible when you watch a game on the screen and the camera follows the ball.

A tremendous victory and one that should reverberate through the Scottish game It was a delight to see Richie Gray collecting a medal. He may be in the evening of what has been a terrific if interrupted career; he may no longer carries in which he looked like a rampaging elephant (but one with a rare ability to offload the ball to a supporting player) but he is still dominant in the line-out and powerful at close-quarters. He looks good for a year or two yet.

A great way to end the season, if that is seasons ever end nowadays. Some of the heroes of Pretoria will be off for this tour of the New World from north to south. Do these matches belong to this season or next? No matter. Franco Smith's team have given us our finest hour for some time, something for the young ones on this tour to live up to.