A REVENGE win and a scoring bonus point surely means an impressive performance and a delighted coach? No. Dave Rennie, the man in charge of Glasgow Warriors, was pleased with the scoreboard, but not much more. The way his team played in the opening half came in for particular criticism.

“I was pretty disappointed with the first 40, I thought we were pretty flat,” he said. “They [the Ospreys] did a good job, they slowed our ball down and we lost a lot of races in the contact area. It was a bit better in the second half, but we’ve got a lot of strides to make.

“There’s plenty of character in the group. We made a fair few tackles today but didn’t have the same sort of line speed as last week. We faded a lot inside which allowed them to step back in and find little bits of space when they should have been mopped up.

“Our defence did reward us with a couple of tries, but we can be way better. I think the score probably flattered us a bit.”

The worry for Rennie and his fellow coaches is that, if you include the pre-season match against the Dragons, this is the third game in succession where they have had to rescue themselves in the second half.

They did it in style, at least as far as the scoreboard was concerned, with 21 unanswered points after they came out of the changing room, but Rennie was not fooling himself even that had been perfect.

That said, there were aspects that did please him. The resilience was as good as he could have hoped for, Alex Dunbar collected two tries and the man-of-the-match performance, Finn Russell managed a full 80 minutes of action to shake off the inevitable rust and new flanker Callum Gibbins made an impressive debut.

“I don’t have the numbers but his work rate was phenomenal,” Rennie enthused about the player he persuaded to move from Wellington in New Zealand to Scotland. “He cramped up a bit later on, which is probably proof of the work he got through. He was asked to go 80 in his first hit out and I’m really rapt with him.

“If you look at the footage, you’ll not just see him making tackles, you’ll see him getting up and being an absolute nuisance, providing opportunities to counter-ruck. He’ll be better for that run-out, but I thought it was a pretty strong debut.”

The Ospreys won’t be happy with their showing either, being even more error-ridden than Glasgow’s. With two teams looking to run the ball and perfect conditions, it should have been set up for a high-scoring thriller, not the grind it was for long periods with defences on top and mistakes at crucial times costing both teams.

The Welsh attack and Gibbins produced the first Glasgow try, with Sam Davies the Ospreys fly-half, under pressure from the flanker and throwing out a horror pass that missed all his backs and went straight to Dunbar, the Warriors’ centre. He had 50 yards to go, but had no trouble showing a clean pair of heels to the chasing defence.

Russell, playing his first game of the season after taking a break following his summer with Scotland and the British & Irish Lions, added the conversion and a penalty but the rest of the half belonged to the Ospreys.

Full-back Dan Evans put them on the scoreboard, running a short line off Davies’ shoulder to find a gap, and they might have had a second try when Jeff Hassler, the wing was clear on the left but could not hang on to the tricky pass.

“There were a couple of expletives in there at half time,” Rennie admitted. “But, for all that we got wrong in the first half around our attack, our accuracy and our clean-outs, it was 10-all. They’d fired a lot of shots and we had been forced to defend a lot, so we knew that we needed to up the tempo a little bit and be prepared to play.

“We’re trying to get a bit more balance, but there was a lack of edge and brutality from us and that’s an area we’re going to have to get better in.”

Eventually they did crack the defence, a tap penalty from Russell put Ruaridh Jackson, the full-back, into space and his off-load from the deck put Leonardo Sarto, on for Hughes, in for the second home try.

That woke the Ospreys up again but lock Bradley Davies could not ground the ball after powering over the line and the Scots hit back immediately when Sam Davies again threw a poor pass in midfield, it was picked off by Adam Ashe, the No 8, who ran in the third try.

There was still one more moment of jubilation for the home fans after Bradley Davies had been sent to the sin-bin for taking his opponent out in a line-out. The Scots, taking full advantage, sent Dunbar barrelling over the line for the bonus point score.

Scorers: Glasgow Warriors: Tries: Dunbar (2), Sarto, Ashe. Cons: Russell (4). Pen: Russell.

Ospreys: Try: Evans. Con: S Davies. Pen: S Davies.

Glasgow Warriors: R Jackson; L Jones, A Dunbar (N Grigg, 69-72), P Horne (N Grigg, 72, R Hughes (L Sarto, 45); F Russell, A Price (H Pyrgos, 61); J Bhatti (O Kebble, 53-62), G Turner (P MacArthur, 67), Z Fagerson (D Rae, 61), T Swinson, S Cummings (B Alainu’uese, 63), R Wilson (C), C Gibbins, A Ashe (M Fagerson, 63).

Ospreys: D Evans; K Giles, K Fonotia, C Allen (J Hook, 62), J Hassle (J Baker, 72); S Davies, T Habberfield (R Morgan-Williams, 72); P James (N Smith, 47), S Parry (S Otten, 45), M Fia (R Jones, 55), B Davies (sin bin: 77-end), L Ashley (A Beard, 45), O Cracknell (G Mercer, 72), J Tipuric (C), J King.

Referee: M Mitrea (Italy)

Attendance: 7351