And with Northampton, who travel to Murrayfield this weekend, narrowly beating Castres all four teams have points on the board.

“The pool is already as tight as I thought it would be and we’ve got to try and beat Northampton next week,” said Moffat.

“If Castres beat the Blues it will be level pegging again and the losing bonus point we got is very important.

“The Heineken Cup is up a level from the Magners League and we just weren’t quite at the level you need.

“I don’t think we were far away but enough to be brave losers and we don’t want to be that.

“We came here to win and we just didn’t play well enough to do that.”