Warriors asked for trouble and, unfortunately, it found them...

IT’S never nice to lose any game — and all the more so when it’s a vitally important European tie at home in front of your own fans.

But the manner of how things unfolded last night will be absolutely heartbreaking for the Glasgow Warriors players. It’s bound to hurt that little bit more.

Matt Fagerson will be kicking himself. But, if you’re being brutally honest, he can’t really have any complaints about his red card. It was the correct decision from the referee.

It was a dangerous challenge. Any time you extend your arm away from your body like that in contact, you’re asking for trouble.

We saw during the World Cup earlier this year how the officials are ruthless in the way they deal with these things. There’s a real clampdown from World Rugby.

Glasgow huffed and puffed without ever really troubling La Rochelle in the way they normally would if they were on top form.

The conditions were brutal and no doubt had an impact on their failure to find any fluency in their attacking game.

But the top teams still find a way of getting the job done on nights like that. It called for an ugly victory and unfortunately Glasgow just couldn’t get the job done.

The main reason for that was down to their gamemanagement. They just made too many naive decisions.

They went wide far too often and attempted too many floaty passes when it called for a stickit-up-your jumper approach.

We know how good the likes of Adam Hastings and George Horne can be on their day. They excel when they’re operating with quick, front-foot ball.

The two of them look a million dollars in the half-backs when Glasgow are going all guns blazing on all-out attack mode.

But this was the kind of match that just got away from them. A Henry Pyrgos type of figure would have been able to control the game at scrum-half.

Glasgow’s failure to capitalise on La Rochelle’s yellow card in the second half summed up just how frustrating it was for them.

But there’s two sides to that story. Although they failed to score a point during that period, they could quite easily have been awarded a penalty try.

They certainly had a case for it. Wayne Barnes was very lenient at times as La Rochelle — quite cynically and blatantly — conceded penalty after penalty.

It was a gutsy win for Glasgow in France last week after they fought back from behind and they rightly took the plaudits.

But the flipside of that is that questions will now be asked of them after they failed to back it up. You need to have a Plan B in filthy conditions like last night, but they didn’t seem to have one.

The weather probably levelled things out a fair bit. La Rochelle were quite happy just to grind it out towards the end.

Glasgow were playing with the wind at their back for the whole of the first half, but failed to convert that into a meaningful advantage.

They really ought to have scored a couple of more tries during that period. Instead, they went in trailing at halftime.

They’re not mathematically out and I’m sure they will come out swinging against Exeter Chiefs at Scotstoun in January. It’s the only way they know.

But it’s a long way back from this. They now need to produce something special — most probably two bonus-point wins over Exeter and Sale Sharks to even have a sniff.

What Dave Rennie (above) must do now is lift the spirits of his players ahead of next weekend’s 1872 Cup clash with Edinburgh at Scotstoun.

They can’t afford to wallow in self-pity despite the heartbreak of this result. They’ll be going up against an Edinburgh side who have real momentum.

Richard Cockerill’s men go into the match on the back of successive victories over Wasps in the Challenge Cup.

If conditions are similar and the game turns into an arm wrestle, Edinburgh would almost certainly relish that more than Glasgow.

It’ll be up to the Warriors to be smarter in both deed and thought. They can’t afford to make as many sloppy, naive decisions against their rivals, who will no doubt smell blood.