Stafford McDowall's late try gave Warriors a bonus point

Bulls held a 26-7 lead during the game's latter stages before late tries from Kyle Steyn and Stafford McDowall secured the home side a crucial losing bonus point.

That means the Warriors are still in second position in the standings on 59 points while the Bulls are just one point adrift in third spot with both sides having played 16 matches.

Johan Goosen put Bull six points ahead with a couple of penalties before Jamie Dobie went over in the left hand corner with George Horne slotting the tricky conversion.

Another long-range penalty from Goosen put Bulls back in front at the interval as the visitor's setpiece and defence were giving Warriors little to work with.

Bulls kicked to the corner early in the second period and rumbled over despite Glasgow looking like they had repelled the initial surge.

Another Goosen penalty followed before Sebastian de Klerk got on the end of a breakout after Warriors had kicked away possession.

Warriors never stopped trying and their late tries were rewards for that effort but errors - combined with being penalised at almost every scrummage - gave them little or no platfor.

The Bulls defence was outstanding and, along with their dominance at scrummage time, meant they had no need to be creative with ball in hand.

Warriors look like they had a few players running on empty with the long injury list finally catching up with them. The return of players like Dempsey, both Fagersons, Tuipulotu, Venter (suspended), McKay and Jones can't come quickly enough.

Glasgow head coach Franco Smith told BBC Scotland: "We must expect this from URC, not just the Bulls. There is quality sides pushing each other every week.

"We've done well to be second for a long time. If we face the previous finalists of last year, you'd expect a tough game. The game got away from us. When we missed touch with the score at 9-7, we gave away two tries in the space of 15 minutes.

"I'm still proud of the effort, the boys kept on playing until the end. We ended up pushing for a bonus point. Very happy that we didn't give up and kept working hard, which is the character of this team.

"The Bulls came here with a mission. They made 189 tackles tonight, 80 more than we did. Despite that, we got so many line-breaks but they scrambled well to defend. Compliments to them. They forced us into errors."

Speaking to Premier Sports, Glasgow's George Horne said: "Both teams were flying in, it was a massively physical game and fair play to them, they put in a lot of big shots.

"We're still one point ahead. Massive two games coming up, we'll do our best to win both of them and then see what happens. We're guaranteed a quarter here at Scotstoun. After that, anything can happen.

"We'll have to get a lot better. We showed tonight that we're not as good as some people think we are. A lot of work to be done."