Cut out the stupid mistakes, or face an embarrassing defeat at home, was the uncompromising message from Alastair Kellock to his troops as the disheartened Glasgow side arrived back in Scotland yesterday after throwing away the chance to open their Heineken Cup campaign with a win.

What made it particularly hard to stomach for all those involved was that it was Glasgow blunders that cost them the match 32-22 without forcing the Newport Gwent Dragons to have to do anything particularly clever to claim the points.

“It’s hugely frustrating,” Kellock said. “I don’t want to discredit the Dragons, but we did not play well. We made a huge number of individual errors ranging from missed tackles through bad passes to silly penalties, probably the most we have made in a game this season. We just killed ourselves, we can’t hope to win a game making that number of mistakes.”

Toulouse also misfired badly. In front of their own fans they lost the try count two-nil to Bath and had to kick their way to victory, so under normal circumstances, Glasgow would be looking at the possibility of a major scalp when the French come to Firhill on Friday. Instead, they cannot even start to think about the opposition, there is so much in their own play that they have to correct. “This week has got to be about us and sorting out the errors,” Kellock said. “We know that Toulouse are going to be very, very strong across the board. For Bath to go into the game as they did is all credit to them, but how Toulouse turn up on Friday won’t make any difference if we play the way that we did in Newport.

“We had a really honest evaluation after the game and realise we just have to take individual responsibility for the errors we were making. What made it worse, was that when we did do well, when our shape was good, when we got through those first few phases, we looked dangerous. That makes it even more frustrating. When we cut out the mistakes, we have the players and the game plan to cut teams up, the problem is that we are just not doing enough well.”

The frustration was compounded by taking an 10-0 lead early in the match, Lome Fa’atau intercepting and running in from 90 metres, with Colin Gregor adding the conversion and a penalty. Instead of capitalising on their start, they allowed the Dragons back into the match, overtaking Glasgow with a try from Gareth Wyatt, the wing, plus three penalties and a drop goal from James Arlridge, the fly half.

The Scots managed one of their rare blunder-free spells to create a try for Max Evans, with Gregor converting to level the scores, but again reverted to error mode instead of kicking on.

That allowed Wyatt and Colin Charvis to pull the Welsh clear before Kellock himself got over the line but could not pull his side close enough to threaten a losing bonus point, far less victory.