WITH some of the best rugby they have played for a long time, Glasgow cemented their spot at the top of their conference in the Guinness PRO14 with their eighth straight win. It was revenge, of a sort, for the defeat they suffered to the same opponents in the European Champions Cup, but there were so many changes in both sides that nobody was paying too much attention to the past.

Far more relevant was the all-action first 23 minutes, which saw the Warriors collect a bonus point for four tries, even though they were the first to concede a score. They could not keep it up, however, and failed to score at all after the break, relying on defence to hold out.

"They didn't want to share the ball in the second half," joked Dave Rennie, the head coach, afterwards. "I thought it was a soft first 10 minutes defensively but we were excellent with the ball in hand.

"We wanted to go through the middle of them and our big men did a job there and we went wide when it was on. The first half was pretty solid and the second half we played without the ball a lot and played with 14 men for half of that. There was a lot of character shown to keep them to only one try in the second half."

Both sides were missing players away on international duty, but you would never have guessed from the way they both exploded into the game with verve, imagination and freedom to produce some of the best rugby seen at Scotstoun this season.

It was actually the visitors who started it, young Jordan Larmour, the full-back making his first start, getting them under way with a superb jinking run that scattered the Glasgow defence and left an easy score for Jamison Gibson-Park, the scrum-half.

The lead was short-lived, though. George Horne, the scrum-half clearly enjoying his first game partnership with his brother Peter, racing in pretty much straight from the kick-off.

Leinster were soon back in front. The backs engineering the position, the forwards trying to punch through to suck in the defence and create the space for Rory O’Loughlin to score on the right.

Again, the lead was short-lived and it was Niko Matawalu who made all the difference. He nearly crafted a try straight from the kick off – only Nick Grigg was forced into touch just short – but a magnificent break from his own half then did all the damage. Though he was stopped short, Grigg was again there to finish off from short range.

The big swing in Glasgow’s favour came when Leinster had a man in the sin bin after preventing George Horne taking a quick penalty.

Given the high-octane stuff they were playing, their third try was fairly mundane, driving a line-out maul and George Horne nipping over from the ruck on the visitors' line but the fourth, bonus-point try, more than made up for any lack of flourish.

Glasgow were under pressure; the ball in Leinster hands almost on their line when somehow they managed to steal it. It ended out with Matawalu behind is own goal line. He was never going to play safe, racing outside one line of defence inside another and up the field. He might have made it all the way himself but unselfishly handed it off to Grigg to finish a glorious score.

A penalty before the break seemed to have made the game safe, but Leinster had other ideas as Glasgow started to run foul of the referee with a string of penalties and two yellow cards – their first of the season – bringing the Irish back into the game.

They had a series of mauls on the Glasgow line but it was not until the Scots were a man down, that the managed to take advantage with the ball swinging wide and Adam Byrne, the wing, just having the strength to hold off Grigg and Matawalu to ground the ball in the corner.

Matawalu almost set up another wonder move but could not collect his low kick through and instead it was Leinster who started to dominate up front, helped by a string of penalties against Glasgow whose scrum was in trouble the whole match and also got into trouble in a series of mauls.

They survived thanks to their defence, however, and in the end managed to wrestle enough possession to see out the game.

Scorers: Glasgow Warriors: Tries: G Horne (7, 21), Grigg (15, 23). Cons: P Horne 4. Pen: P Horne (34)

Leinster: Tries: Gibson-Park (6), O’Loughlin (11), A Byrne (46). Cons: R Byrne 3 Scoring sequence (Glasgow Warriors first): 0-7, 7-7, 7-14, 14-14, 21-14, 28-14, 31-14, 31-21.

Glasgow Warriors: R Jackson; L Masaga (L Sarto, 70), N Grigg, S Johnson (A Dunbar, 55, sin bin: 60-70), N Matawalu; P Horne, G Horne (H Pyrgos, 55); J Bhatti (A Allan, 58), G Turner (P MacArthur, 58), D Rae (A Nicol, 69), T Swinson, S Cummings (sin bin: 45-55), R Harley, C Gibbins (C) (L Wynne, 72), M Fagerson (M Smith, 51).

Leinster: J Larmour; A Byrne, R O'Loughlin, C O'Brien (C Marsh, 72), D Kearney; R Byrne (H Keenan, 72), J Gibson-Park (N McCarthy, 51); E Byrne (P Dooley, 51), S Cronin (R Strauss, 58-64, 72), M Bent (A Porter, 51), R Molony (C), M Kearney (D Leavy, 25), S Fardy, J Murphy (sin bin: 16-26, J Murphy, 69’), M Deegan.

Referee: S Berry (South Africa)