If two-time British & Irish Lion Stuart Hogg had not taken ill in the hours before kick-off...

If club captain Ryan Wilson had kept his eyes open while running into the sun and led by example rather than his confrontational instincts when conceding a penalty directly from kick off...

If, with both options available, Wilson had opted for lineout rather than the scrum from which a penalty was conceded after the Scarlets first attack broke down  . . .

If, having had his defensive attributes identified as a reason for his selection before the match, Nick Grigg had not allowed Rhys Patchell to feint his way around him with ease as their second attack produced the opening try  . . .

If Jonny Gray’s rugby intelligence had been rewarded when he dived in among Scarlets feet to claim a try that was disallowed because he was deemed to have been just too sharp in realising the ball was being rolled on to the line, so negating the existence of the offside line  . . .

If, as one of those set to be given additional responsibilities next season, Pete Horne’s easy chance to convert Nick Grigg’s subsequent try had not rebounded off the post and so left his side with plenty of time to register two tries, rather than insufficient to score three times  . . .

Far too many ifs of course and even if all those things had gone their way, still the big but . . . which is that Scarlets have followed Glasgow and Connacht in winning the PRO12 but unlike their immediate predecessors they have kicked on to bridge the gap to Celtic rugby’s big two, Leinster and Munster.

The competitive resilience they have developed was shown in the way they coped with the early loss of as influential a figure as John Barclay, the Scotland captain whose Achilles tendon issue is now a short-term problem for them ahead of the final, but a major worry for his new head coach Richard Cockerill, Edinburgh’s head coach.Having had a season in which he has been able to put across how he wants the game to be played, while assessing the personnel available to him, head coach Dave Rennie should now be judged on the adjustments he makes in seeking to turn a team that has focused on playing style into one capable of winning pressure matches.

He arrived with a formidable track record, having turned a Waikato Chiefs franchise that had rarely made the Super Rugby play-offs and reached just one final in the competition’s history – where a humiliating record 61 point hammering had been inflicted – into champions in each of his first two seasons in charge. An understanding of what is required is there, then, and as he heads back to New Zealand to do some overdue grandad duty, the biggest question is whether Rennie still has the appetite to do what needs to be done.

It is already evident that he has identified in youngsters George Horne and Matt Fagerson, in particular, players that he thinks can be developed to a higher level, while he has a number of new recruits yet to unveil, but the strongest indicator of all may be whether his fellow New Zealander Jason O’Halloran remains on his backroom team at the start of next season.

That is not to set any hares running, because there has not been the slightest suggestion that the backs coach is going anywhere. However, there will be those at Scotstoun, not least among the playing staff and perhaps even more so at Murrayfield who must have been deeply uncomfortable when O’Halloran went public a few weeks ago with his reservations about Scottish players’ capacity to cope with what he described as ‘constructive criticism’.

In claiming they were 20 years behind his Kiwi compatriots in that regard, the man recruited to Scottish rugby to work with Vern Cotter as he sought to bring a harder edge to the national team before being prematurely dumped, challenged the love-fest of positivity that has turned Scottish rugby into an environment that would have had Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup bursting an artery as he assessed the over-celebration of what has been achieved in recent seasons.

The Warriors’ PRO12 win in a brief period of Irish restructuring characterised by their provinces’ first ever failure to provide any of the quarter-finalists in the top European competition remains an isolated tournament success for Scottish rugby’s Millennials.

There, meanwhile, remains a lack of competitive toughness that has now been repeatedly exposed on the road, most recently when the national team was beaten in Cardiff and Dublin; and in pressure matches, most obviously when a Warriors team that was unbeaten in the Pro14 conceded useful leads in its opening two Champions Cup matches in Exeter and decisively at home against eventual champions Leinster.

Friday was the latest example of the latter as the hosts’ lack of discipline and accuracy made it relatively easy for the battle-hardened Scarlets to claim their place in the Pro14 final.

In that aforementioned assessment of his personnel, Rennie has offered insight into his thinking, not least in so far marginalising vaunted new recruit Huw Jones in favour of antipodean pair Grigg and Sam Johnson and in repeatedly expressing through selection his frustrations with Scotland half-backs Finn Russell and Ali Price, while also giving considerable responsibility to another of this season’s newcomers, Callum Gibbins.

After Friday’s semi-final, having admitted possession was kicked away too often, he was respectful when invited to comment on Russell’s performance after the stand-off was given a lesson in how to run a game by Rhys Patchell, just as in Cardiff in February.But the words Rennie chose were hardly the parting tribute of one who feels he is losing a key figure.

“Finn’s been a great servant here and I’m not going to have a flick at him on the way out,” said the coach.

On-field generalship will be vital to the prospects of a club that has not changed much from the days when its teams were branded ‘nice to watch and nice to play against’.

The question for those who continue to eulogise is whether they want to continue to value style over substance, or are at last ready to challenge the lack of fulfilment of annual promises of jam tomorrow.

As for the remaining Warriors, whether they can go from flat track Pro14 bullies to European contenders may lie in their capacity to handle the truth so recently delivered by drill sergeant O’Halloran.