Bulls once again in Glasgow Warriors’ path to United Rugby Championship glory

Putting one over on Glasgow on Scottish soil would be sweet for the Bulls given their previous knockout defeats at the hands of the Warriors, not least that famous night in Pretoria that sealed the URC title in June 2024.

The South Africans will surely relish the switch to Murrayfield. The Glasgow commercial team will move heaven and earth to shift as many tickets as possible, but the stadium will be far from full and less intimidating than the atmosphere generated at a packed Scotstoun.

Moving away from the plastic pitch to a more natural surface will surely be welcomed by a side whose scrum power is central to their game. The Bulls may just feel the change of stadium could strip Glasgow of some of their aura.

“I’m not really too bothered about how they see it,” said Warriors captain Steyn, who scored two tries in a player of the match performance against Connacht.

“The challenge is going to be there anyway and it’s a semi-final. We’ve obviously come up against them twice this season and they’ve both been really physical, really tight games and we’re expecting nothing less.

“We love Scotstoun. If you gave us an opportunity to play there, we’d take it every time. We also really thrive on the opportunity for rugby in Glasgow to grow and to get more fans into a stadium and to have opportunities like that. We’ve really loved the opportunity to be at Hampden in the past couple of years for the 1872 game.

“Now we’ve got Murrayfield, we’re just really excited about that. We’re really hoping that we can do whatever we can to pump the ticket sales and hopefully get Glasgow, Edinburgh, Scottish rugby fans, everybody in there.

“To have more of these big games in Scotland, we hope can only be a good thing for any aspiring young Scottish kid that wants to play rugby, boy or girl. The more games of this kind of scale that we can get in the country, the better.”