Glasgow Warriors recovered from a wretched first-half display in Parma to defeat Zebre 14-6 and maintain their grip on second place in the United Rugby Championship. The defending URC champions had never lost to Zebre in 24 previous encounters, but put that record in a bit of jeopardy with a poor opening 40 minutes in which they failed to trouble the scoreboard and went into the dressing room 6-0 down. They were let off the hook by some poor Zebre handling on the tryline, but with no doubt some stern words from head coach Franco Smith ringing in their ears, they addressed the situation after the break. Josh McKay and Stafford McDowall scored tries in the first ten minutes of the second half and then Glasgow saw the game out amid some tough resistance from Zebre, who once again demonstrated their improvement at this level. Glasgow were going for ten in a row against Italian opposition and coming off last weekend’s 52-0 Champions Cup defeat by Leinster in Dublin, they were slow out of the blocks with ten changes to the first XV making them slightly disjointed. The opening exchanges were messy and unstructured. Zebre earned a penalty on eight minutes when hooker Gregor Hiddlestone was pinged for not releasing in the tackle and the hosts’ No 10 Giacomo Da Re made no mistake from in front of the posts. Warriors tried to respond and nearly got their first try of the night on 16 minutes. Jamie Dobie slalomed his way through the Zebre defence but was hauled down by Bautista Stavile with the tryline in sight. The contact forced a knock-on and the opportunity dissipated into the Parma air. Glasgow were making too many errors and Zebre so nearly capitalised, only to be undone by a terrible mistake of their own when back rower Giovanni Licata knocked on when given the simple task of grounding under the posts after an excellent run from Simone Gesi down the wing on 23 minutes. History repeated itself on 25 minutes, although Zebre centre Scott Gregory fumbled in the corner under extreme pressure from Jare Oguntibeju. Da Re added a penalty on 30 minutes to make it 6-0 as the crime count crept up. Glasgow nearly landed their first try of the night on 40 minutes through Josh McKay but Jacopo Trulla hacked the ball away from under his nose. Warriors had a penalty advantage though and went for a lineout in the corner, but failed to make pressure count and they went in pointless at the break. Glasgow flew out of the traps at the start of the second half and Sebastian Cancelliere was the victim of a head-on-head illegal tackle from Zebre lock Matteo Canali, who was yellow-carded for his actions. This gave Warriors fresh impetus and McKay was sent clear in the corner with Tom Jordan - who had just come on as a sub - landing a tough conversion to make it 7-6. Down a man, Zebre were on the ropes and struggling as Glasgow racked the moves together. Sam Talakai battered through to set up McDowall for a converted try in front of the posts and Warriors clocked up 14 points when in the ascendancy numerically. Zebre responded with character. McDowall denied them a certain try with a great piece of defence on his own line and Warriors continued to be pressed physically at times by the hosts. The Italians’ handling was their undoing, though, in attacking areas. The scoreboard remained untroubled for the rest of the match as Warriors did the bare minimum to return to Scotland with the win and stay above third-placed Bulls by three points with three matches of the regular season remaining.