WHETHER pointedly or accidentally, as Glasgow Warriors head coach Dave Rennie explained why his players would be returning to work later this year than last there was a reminder that reaching the knockout stages of this year’s Pro14 as they did represented significant improvement on last season’s performance in the same competition.

As he heads back to New Zealand for a few weeks to, among other things, spend some time with the recently born grandchild that he has yet to meet, his players will get a full month off after their semi-final exit at the hands of the defending champion Scarlets on Friday evening, albeit they cannot relax completely.

“The big thing is we’ve been going for 50 weeks,” Rennie said. “We started on June 1 because last year Glasgow didn’t make the play-offs, so they’d finished by the end of April and got a big chunk of May off.

“The boys need to mentally freshen up. They’ll be expected to work hard and will be tested when they get back so we can build on things. It’s important you get away, clear the head and get excited about next season.”

A year into the job and he believes there is plenty to build on for an organisation that presents him with different challenges to those he confronted when leading Waikato Chiefs to Super Rugby titles.

“I think we’ve grown in lots of areas,” Rennie said. “From a leadership point of view, we’ve made a lot of developments and we’ve brought a lot of good young kids through. Obviously, when you’ve got the international windows, you’re missing heaps and with the injuries we had, a lot of those young fellas played a lot of footy. They’ll be better for it next year.

“Looking at our squad for next year, I think we’ve got more depth, but ultimately I’m disappointed not to be playing next week. We always said it would be a pass mark if we could get into the semis, and then it was about being the best team on the park for two weeks and getting a title. We fell short of that.”

They did, rather badly in the end as the Scarlets raced into an unassailable 28-3 after 45 minutes - going on to win 28-13 - but as he seeks to help Scottish rugby work out what is required, he now has much more information to work with in terms of adjusting from the Southern Hemisphere where the focus was on one major, high calibre tournament.

Unlike Celtic rivals Leinster, Munster and now the Scarlets, Scotland’s teams have never found a way of competing on two fronts, as highlighted by that failure to reach the Pro12 play-offs a year ago in the season that finally saw Glasgow get out of their pool for the first time in 20 years in Europe’s top competition. It was evident again this season, too, as they headed into the Champions Cup with the last unbeaten record in Europe, only for that to change joltingly when they visited Exeter, then played host to Leinster the following week.

In fairness, the most fleeting of glances at the honours board in Europe’s leading competitions offers perspective: Leinster, champions of Europe; Exeter, eight points clear of Saracens in defence of their English title; Montpellier, leaders of the French Top 14 table.

Being asked whether Glasgow can, this time next year, be where Leinster, Munster and Scarlets were this time around in reaching the last four in the Champions Cup his initial response was wry, then, before he acknowledged that Leinster faced the same challenge and negotiated nine brutal matches without defeat.

“I’ll have a look at the draw first, eh? There’s no doubt our pool was tough; the side that came out of it went all the way,” he said.

“If you’re not good enough to get out of your pool, clearly you’re not good enough to make the semis. We’ll build on things. We plan to have a better European campaign and I think we’ve got the boys here to do the job, but there’s a fair bit of work to be done between now and then.”

Pretty as their rugby has often been down the years, there remains a need to develop a harder, more direct edge and reinforcements have been recruited to that end, albeit most details have yet to be revealed.

“We’ve done most of it, but we haven’t announced many of those yet. It’s not massive. We’ve got maybe eight or nine who are leaving and we’ve probably replaced about seven of those guys,” Rennie said of their transfer market manoeuvring.

“Will we be looking to strengthen the pack? Absolutely. The big thing is around being able to create some go-forward. We’ve got some young men there who are going to be better for this. We’ve got a couple of options to come back in. Hopefully that will give us a little bit more go-forward and a little bit more edge.

“I think we’re pretty clear in what we’re trying to do, but we need to be more dynamic through the middle, get a bit of balance, understand that we’ve gone through the middle, we’ve grouped them and now it’s on to move the ball away from there. We weren’t always that sharp in that regard against Scarlets. They were impressive and you’ve got to take your hat off to them.”

As he metaphorically did so, though, Rennie gave every impression of looking forward to that gesture of respect being reciprocated in a year's time.