LOSING trophies is never a happy place to be, but the Glasgow Warriors players believe they can bounce back from handing over the 1872 Cup to Edinburgh by putting themselves firmly back into the hunt for the much bigger prize of the Guinness PRO12 title.

Spurred on by memories of failure in last season's final in Dublin, they are determined to go one better this season and a tough second half to the campaign means they don't have the luxury of throwing away points against teams in the lower half of the league table - not even a side like the Scarlets, this tomorrow's opponents, who are hot on the heels of Connacht in the hunt for a place in the top six.

It is a tricky time for players at all the leading clubs. After this week, the league takes a break while they switch their attentions to fight on a second front in the battles surrounding the European Champions Cup. After that, most of the Glasgow squad will expect, or at least hope, to be opening up a third front as the RBS Six Nations Championship gets under way and they anticipate again providing most of the Scotland side. With so much ahead, it is tricky not to get distracted.

That may be one reason for their below-par performance last weekend - too many of them they allowed their attention to be diverted by domestic matters, the Scotland-trial nature of the Edinburgh game and the special pressures of the derby atmosphere, but they have no such excuse tomorrow. This is bread and butter rugby and with games against all their leading competitors to come, including facing the Ospreys, the current leaders both home and away, they cannot afford to shed points against teams much further back down the table.

In the end, the last defeat did not do that much damage to their bigger ambitions. The leading four clubs at the start of the round all found themselves with tricky away derbies and they all lost. So while the chasing pack has closed the gap on the frontrunners, there was no real change among those jostling for position at the top.

It's strange how often these patterns pop up in fixture cards, and this weekend, there is another. The matches are all top-six v bottom-six shootouts with Glasgow facing the toughest task as they take on the best of the rest. "When you are near the top of the table, every game is a must-win," pointed out Tim Swinson, the lock. "We have to focus on that, and really push forward. We want to be a top side, so that means beating all the other teams regularly.

"It is a huge game, regardless of what happened last season [when Glasgow won both ties]. The Scarlets are a tough side anyway, they beat us earlier in the season and though we beat them twice last season they were both hard-fought games. They have a lot of quality players and play at a high pace, like us, so it should be a good game. The have a lot of good ball carriers and John Barclay, who we all know about. They have a lot of good players from one to 15."

Weather reports suggest that Swinson and his fellows in the pack are going to be the key players tomorrow. With heavy rain and a wind gusting up to 50mph dominating the forecast, it is not going to be a night for fancy rugby, more one for brute force to win the inevitable arm wrestle.

"We play in Glasgow, once in a while it rains here! Bad weather is something we have played in over the last few years I have been here," he pointed out. "The old adage is that forwards win games, the backs decide by how many. Sometimes it is going to be a tight fought game in the wet weather and the forwards have to stick in.

"There has been a focus on getting our processes right. We have fantastic players, not just in the 23 but in the 46 or so in the wider squad, we are really pushing forward and know that if we meet our standards we can beat any team we meet. It is a case of really focussing on what we can to to meet those standards this weekend."

"One of the personal things I always joke about is that I will retire on the spot if I ever play a perfect game. I have been playing eight or nine years and still have not managed it. As players, we aim to succeed at what we do and play to the best of our ability

"Week-to-week there are obviously a few things we need to change, a few things we were not doing quite right. Against Edinburgh there were a lot of things we did not do quite right, so that is what we have to change. We are fixing things."

Gregor Townsend, the head coach, will reveal his team later today, but clearly for some it is a chance to redeem themselves after the Edinburgh match; others missed out on that scarring experience and will get the chance to show they could have done better with European and national campaigns just around the corner.