LOSING is never nice but this season has been especially painful because of the manner of our defeats.

There is no getting away from the fact that it has been a massively disappointing start to the campaign with nine losses out of 12.

We are concerned with how things have gone but nobody is panicking.

It’s frustrating for everybody at the club – players, coaches, the board, supporters – because we showed what we are capable of by beating a fully-loaded Northampton in pre-season and then challenged teams hard at the start of the Guinness Pro12.

Once we become a difficult team to beat, rather than beating ourselves, we will climb the table but recently the opposition has just had to wait for us to make errors. We have been our own worst enemy.

The stats were unbelievable from last Friday’s 38-12 loss to Munster with a huge difference between the first half and the second.

We beat them for field position and possession in the first half but only led 9-7 at the break. Things turned around and they scored 31 to 3 by showing better execution in the 22.

Our attacking driving lineout has improved massively this season but we’ve conceded too many tries in that part of the game with Munster crossing for three. That’s painful as a forward but we just have to keep working hard and try to adapt better to situations out on the field.

That we didn’t have any trips to their 22 in the second half tells the story. We just couldn’t get away from our line and were killed by poor game management.

It’s easy to blame the half-backs for the exits being bad but it’s down to all of us; they are the ones who have to execute the skill under pressure and there is only so much pressure they can take.

We need to mix it up to give our kickers the best chance to get us out of our 22, we have been guilty of being a bit predictable and teams have coded us and seen that we do things a certain way.

We need to keep the opposition honest, making them wonder how we are going to win the lineout ball and what we are going to do with it. Will we be box-kicking from source? Are we going to play it one phase or two?

We have to mix it up a bit to take the pressure off the kickers.

Strange as it may sound given where we are in the table, we have had a lot of positives to our game in general and we will need to be at our best for another tough game against Glasgow on Sunday.

It will be interesting to see how their coach Gregor Townsend plays it because they have Toulouse around the corner in a massive European Rugby Champions Cup double-header.

The Warriors are a quality team regardless of who is selected but we beat them twice last season so there is hope. We have got to be adventurous and, crucially, get ourselves in the right areas.