Rennie and Gibbins philosophical after final defeat

Despite the vocal backing of the vast majority of a 47,000-strong crowd in Glasgow’s east end, the Warriors were unable to complete a late fightback to wrest the trophy from the Irish province’s grasp.

“We’re disappointed,” admitted Rennie.

“We’re a lot better side than that – we’ve played a lot better over the course of the last month. We made too many errors. They put a lot of pressure on us through their kicking game, and I thought they defended really well.

“We had some opportunities but didn’t take them, and they’re pretty good at strangling you out of the game. They were able to dominate the ball in the second half and took the pace out of the game.”

Tries from Matt Fagerson and Grant Stewart were ultimately in a losing cause for the Scotstoun outfit, with Rennie giving credit to Leinster’s defence in the immediate aftermath.

“I thought our big men gave us some really good go-forward around the edges, but maybe we overdid going through the middle from time to time,” said Rennie.

“We handed them the ball eight or nine times and you can’t afford to do that in a final. You’ve got to give Leinster credit though – they kept coming at us with great line speed and they nullified us.”

Club co-captain Callum Gibbins echoed his coach’s sentiments, the New Zealand-born flanker reflective following a result that slipped away.

“I think we felt pretty comfortable in the first-half,” he said.

“We just coughed up too much ball, but I thought we were going pretty well. When Matt scored that try in the first quarter of the game, we were finding space well.

“Once they got the ball in the second half though, they were controlling the pace of the game really well. I was still confident we could get it back late on, but it wasn’t to be.”

After a season that saw Glasgow finish with the highest points total in the Guinness PRO14 regular season and set a new league record for try bonus-points, however, Rennie believes the foundations are in place for his side as the squad now looks ahead to 2019/20.

“It’s tough to reflect on where we are after this season following a disappointing result like that, but we’ll certainly review it over the coming weeks,” said the Glasgow boss.

“You can tell by the disappointment in the changing room that we’d back ourselves against anyone in Europe, though. We just weren’t there on Saturday.”