Franco Smith fired up as Glasgow reach Challenge Cup final

Glasgow's South African coach Franco Smith was over the moon after seeing his side reach the Challenge Cup final with a 35-17 win over rivals Scarlets in Llanelli.

The Warriors will tackle Toulon or Benetton in Dublin on May 19, and they are the first Scottish team to reach the Challenge Cup final since Edinburgh did so eight years ago.

It's also the first time that Glasgow has reached a European final.

And they were good value for their semi-final triumph, scoring tries from centre Stafford McDowall, who claimed a double, scrum-half George Horne, flanker Rory Darge and replacement hooker Johnny Matthews.

Horne also kicked five conversions for a 15-point tally as the Scarlets were overhauled after leading 17-14 early in the second period.

"It means a lot to them. Everyone is very excited around that," Glasgow head coach Smith said.

"But we know there are still a lot of learnings to take from this, a lot of improvement to be made. We have the ability, we have the skillset - we just need to now use the lessons learnt from this week better.

"The talk at half-time was about settling down. Even some of our internationals were just a little bit too nervous, which shows what this means to them.

"They didn't want to lose tonight, and I thought we started off so well, but we got a little bit jittery.

"We calmed it down at half-time. The plan didn't change. The plan was specific for this week and I thought we stuck to that even though Scarlets did extremely well to unsettle us and rattle us.

"Their line-speed from a defence perspective was very good, and we didn't manage to get out of our half for various reasons, but it was important to show some resilience before the end.

"It's about managing the emotional intelligence during the game and going into the next big challenge."