IT was one of the great nights at Scotstoun: a 42-13 dismemberment of Leicester that got Glasgow Warriors’ Champions Cup campaign off to the best possible start. And certainly when compared to the tame defeat by Northampton in the opening game of the same competition a year ago, Friday’s victory showed Gregor Townsend’s side are again capable, as they were in their PRO12-winning season, of peaking for the big occasion.

All the same, it was easy to see why neither the head coach nor his players were willing to get carried away by the result, no matter how satisfying it was to win the physical battle against a team who pride themselves on their prowess in the pack. This is only one game of six in Pool One, and the Warriors will probably have to win another four if they are to qualify for the quarter-finals of European rugby’s premier competition for the first time.

Townsend eventually came out with the verdict “Obviously delighted”, but not until he had outlined a series of shortcomings that might have been exposed by more ruthless or more imaginative opponents. Similarly, Gordon Reid, who could hardly have asked for a better way in which to mark his 100th appearance for the team, engaged in a spot of self-criticism before accepting that a degree of self-satisfaction was in order.

“There’s a lot of stuff we need to work on still, but to go away with a win like that is absolutely fantastic,” said the Scotland prop, who would have scored in the corner had he held a Henry Pyrgos pass with the line at his mercy. “We can go into Monday, look at what we need to improve on, and hopefully improve on it for the following week.”

Next up for Glasgow is a game on Saturday at former European champions Munster, who Reid expects to be even tougher opponents in this tournament than they are in the league. “It’s a horrible place. We know them really well because of the PRO12, but it’s a different dog in Europe. We’ll have to go out there and give our all and hopefully do as well as we did here.”

And if they win in Limerick - as they are well capable of doing on this form - Glasgow then have back-to-back games before Christmas against Racing 92, last season’s runners-up who beat them in the pool stages in Paris last time round before losing the return at Rugby Park. In other words, there is a long and arduous way to go before those quarter-finals are in sight.

Still, the combination of virtues displayed against Leicester has to give Glasgow heart. Yes, they made errors, and yes again, the one try they conceded came all too cheaply, but they hit back almost immediately after that score to put in their best spell of the game - an eight-minute stretch which yielded three tries. And in addition to the intelligence in attack that produced those scores, they tightened up in defence to get the better of a Tigers attack that showed limited imagination.

Leonardo Sarto claimed two tries in his best outing, and Mark Bennett, Fraser Brown and Henry Pyrgos got the others, but Reid admitted he would have been happier at the end of the game had he also got on the scoresheet. Instead, after letting the ball slip from his grasp, he punched the corner flag in frustration.

“I wish I could celebrate it a wee bit more with that try,” the forward added when congratulated on his 100th appearance. “The corner flag will wake up tomorrow pretty sore.

“No, it was amazing to go out there. They’re a big team, forward-oriented. I thought we did pretty well.

“We knew they thought they were coming up here to give us a good battle in the scrum, have one over on us, but we knew what to expect. We went out there, we gave our all, and we came away with a good result.”

It might have been an even better result if the referee, Mathieu Raynal of France, red-carded Leicester centre Matt Toomua for a highly dangerous tip-tackle on Finn Russell. Instead, the Wallabies international, who was making an inauspicious debut for the English club, only got a yellow card.

Russell managed to throw out an arm to ensure he landed on his shoulder first before his head made contact with the ground, and that was reason enough, according to some, for the incident to be deemed less serious than a dismissal. But the onus is on the tackler, not the tackled player, to ensure a safe landing - and Toomua did quite the reverse.

Reid admitted he thought the Australian should have been off for good, but explained that the incident had worked in his own team’s favour - they rushed in en masse to remonstrate with Toomua, and were a far more assertive side after the incident. “He was quite lucky to get a yellow card, but the referee’s there to make a decision, so we can only do what the referee says.

“It just shows you what kind of team we actually are - when one person goes down we’re all in. It’s all or nothing, kind of thing. Everybody’s got each other’s backs. They’re a physical team, so we just matched them physically.”

More than matched them, actually. Now more of the same will be needed against Munster.