GREGOR Townsend has vowed that Glasgow will learn lessons from their gut-wrenching 34-12 defeat in the PRO12 final with Leinster at the RDS.

Warriors failed to fire on Saturday night with Toony's men unable to cross the white wash during a disappointing 80 minutes in which only the boot of Finn Russell kept their hopes alive at the interval before the champions ran away with the game in the second period.

But Townsend was determined to take positives from Glasgow's first-ever major final and a season in which his side recorded their highest-ever league finish of second place and set a new record of nine consecutive victories on the bounce.

Toony said: "There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the final and we will make sure that we do make the most of them.

"The main thing is that we use this first major final to kick-on and get stronger. If you look at last season then we lost to Leinster in the semi-final and that gave us the platform this season to come back a stronger team.

"We have not only made our first final but we have also recorded our highest ever league finish with second place.

"So now that we have done all of that, have that type of priceless experience in the bank, we will make sure that we make the most of it.

"As a group it was collectively and individually pretty much the first final for all of our players and they will all benefit from that.

"But season on season we have shown that we are continuing to progress and develop as a team and what we can't allow to happen is the disappointment of losing the final to stall that.

"Instead we must use that disappointment on Saturday night as a driver to come back next season even more determined. I believe we will do just that."

Ultimately it was a disappointing performance from Glasgow. All too often botched handling causing strong field position and multi-phase moves to breakdown with Leinster all too happy to hit hard on the counter.

With some of Warriors' play forced and at times rushed a lack of composure on the biggest stage badly undermined the Scotstoun side's ability to hurt the champions, even although they were boosted by the sight of Brian O'Driscoll's early departure through injury.

And Toony admitted that stage-fright may have ruined his men's big night out in Dublin.

THE Warriors head coach said: "We have to be honest and say that we could have handled the occasion better.

"We could not have asked for more from the Glasgow support in terms of the numbers and the level of backing they gave us and the atmosphere was fantastic.

"But we lacked a bit of composure when we had made some really good gains and assumed excellent field position and at times we rushed things.

"I also felt that there were occasions when we needed to have more control and more patience in our play.

"Again that comes down to the composure aspect of things and we will learn from that.

"But you know that every time you go to the RDS to play Leinster you have to bring your A-game with you and I think that is the big regret from Saturday night, if we are honest we can't say that we did that.

"Maybe the final was great from a neutral's perspective but that was not the case from a Glasgow standpoint."