On the face of it, Saturday’s defeat by Leinster at Celtic Park was the same old story for Glasgow Warriors as they fell short against one of European rugby’s powerhouses.

To date, the disproportionate amount of investment in the west that – as Edinburgh's head coach has repeatedly flagged up - preceded the arrival of Richard Cockerill and Dave Rennie to their current posts in 2017, has brought a solitary international trophy, has yet to generate a win in a European knockout match and has even failed to bring about as many 1872 Challenge Cup wins as it should.

This time, though, there was a genuine sense of Glasgow being hard-done by, accompanied with a refreshingly genuine acceptance of responsibility for failure being from management and players who seem ready to absorb what they ought to from this experience.

How it might have ended had Leinster been reduced to 14 men for all of the final 15 minutes as they probably should, rather than Rob Kearney being allowed to return after his sin-binning for having ended supporters favourite Stuart Hogg’s Glasgow career in the woolly unhappiness of concussed disappointment, is hardly worth agonising about.

A difficult decision was taken by officials who knew there was no malice in the Leinster man’s reckless failure in his duty of care to his fellow British & Irish Lion’s welfare and after Grant Stewart’s try had brought Glasgow back within a score at 18-15 down, the Irish team was immediately returned to full strength to begin the process of winding down the clock, which they performed with typical efficiency.

For Glasgow head coach Rennie the aftermath was not a time for recriminations, so much as recognising that his side had proven themselves capable of competing for 80 minutes with the recently deposed European champions, who have claimed that title on a record number of occasions as well as more Celtic league, Pro12 and Pro14 titles than any other team, but had only themselves to blame for their defeat.

He also professes to be relishing the challenges of generating internal and external competitiveness within a squad that must constantly cope with the pull of international demands, claiming to find benefits in that situation and doing so in a tone that is at odds with the faux positivity that has blighted Scottish rugby for so many years.

“We’re in a pretty good place,” said the New Zealander.

“I’ve mentioned a number of times that we have an advantage of a number of international guys who can’t play week-in and week-out. Some people see that as a disadvantage, but we see it as an advantage because we can play a lot of other guys who have grown heaps.

“We’ve got some good young men coming through, a lot of competition for places and we’ve created real depth and we saw that during this competition when we scored the most points during the international windows, which means we’ve got some other guys doing a really good job for us.

“We’ve done a fair bit of contracting already which we’ll announce in the coming weeks, but, really, we think we’ve got the nucleus of a good side. We’ve got some good young men who are going to play for Glasgow for a number of years.

“As we do, we’ve got to tweak, we’ve got to add a little bit which is going to maybe give us a different edge to our game.”

Rennie acknowledged that inability to match the wage demands that Stuart Hogg can now make, like Finn Russell before him, presents challenges, but does not see them as insurmountable.

“We’ve still got a pretty experienced side, if you look at the number of centurions,” he noted.

“We often talk about Finn Russell leaving and now Hoggy leaving, but those guys get to a level where we just can’t afford to keep them and we can’t afford to replace a Stuart Hogg with a Stuart Hogg because that’s why he is going to Exeter – he’s getting double what we pay him. So, you’ve got to develop kids, or you spend a bit of money who is maybe not as good but has the potential.

“But, ultimately, x amount of years back someone gave Hoggy a crack as a kid and someone gave Finn a crack as a kid, and they are now where they are. So, it is the same mind-set around guys like Adam and so on.

“There will be a good young full-back who may or may not get a crack next year, and we may need to bring someone in to fill a hole for a season until one of those young guys come through, but we can’t compete with the big teams from a financial point of view, so we’ve got to unearth rough diamonds and give them opportunities to bring them through a bit quicker.”

That process is even more accelerated in a World Cup season and while that gives the lesser teams in the Pro14 an advantage in having greater continuity across the season, Rennie reckons Glasgow are ready for that challenge too.

“We’ll have a big chunk away with Scotland, and we’ve got four other guys who we think will go away with other international teams, but we’ve created pretty good depth and we’re still going to have a pretty good side left here.

“We’ve got a lot of sevens boys, six of them are going to train with us, we’ve got a lot of our tier three academy boys and some of them will play for us next year.

There are some good kids coming through, so there will be opportunities for other young guys, and the fact that we’ve blooded a number of young fellas this year is going to help us, we think.

“There’s no doubt that our depth will be tested early, especially if we get a couple of injuries, or if Scotland get any injuries in their preparation and they look to us to fill the hole.

“We’ll work hard in the pre-season and make sure we’re ready to go. Sides like Connacht won’t be affected much and will be pretty strong, but we’ve shown that with our international boys away we can still win it.”