JOSH STRAUSS was in Glasgow city centre yesterday afternoon to help publicise a new partnership between Martha’s "healthy fast food" restaurant and the Glasgow Warriors rugby team. The St Vincent Street eaterie has been doing the catering for the squad since the summer, and if the nutritional value of their fare has had anything to do with the recovery time of the giant South African-born number eight during an injury-ravaged start to the season then this deal was a masterstroke for the Scotstoun-based outfit.

"I started pre-season and injured my ligaments in the week before the first warm-up game, but I was actually lucky because I was supposed to be out for 12 weeks but was back in four,” he explained.

Strauss was then concussed in his first game back against Cardiff Blues in mid-September, and there was nothing the quinoa, kale, apple and horseradish salad from Martha’s could do about that, so he was out for two weeks. But when the 30-year-old tore a calf muscle while training with the Scotland squad ahead of the recent Autumn Test series, another miracle recovery act was on the cards and he was back in time to play against the Ospreys last Friday night.

Having said that, he may just have wished that the injury was still troubling him given the way that game went. Gregor Townsend’s men were way off the pace when going down 22-5 to the Welshmen. That result meant the Warriors had lost both their matches during the Autumn Test window and as a result they dropped to fifth in the Guinness Pro 12 table.

It is a highly disappointing state of affairs but Strauss, who captained the side at the weekend, insists his team are ready to confine this minor slump to the dustbin of ancient history now that their sizeable international contingent are back in harness.

"Last Friday was similar to the game before against the Scarlets – we just didn’t get much going in either match. There was plenty heart in our defence but our attack was poor. So we’ve looked at that: getting the structures right and executing better. As I said to the boys after the game: there’s no use crying over spilt milk," he said

"One of the issues last week was that we’d had a lot of chopping and changing personnel and the role clarity wasn’t there. It can be asking a lot of some new guys coming in, especially the academy guys stepping up, to learn everything in the space of a few days."

"So a big focus for me and the team this week has been about role clarity, encouraging players to ask their questions before training, and before games, and not leave it until after they’ve made a mistake to seek clarity."

Strauss acknowledges that one of the Warriors’ strengths in previous years has been their ability to build and maintain momentum during the Autumn Test and Six Nations windows when teams are disrupted by international call-ups, so it is troubling that this November has been so disappointing.

With 19 players from the club involved in the Scotland set-up during the past month, there is inevitably a drop-off in standards as a result, but the Warriors seem to have coped with that better in the past.

Several key players such Leone Nakarawa, Niko Matawala, DTH van der Merwe and Duncan Weir have moved on during the last 18 months and been replaced by individuals with bags of potential but who are not quite the finished article yet – however, Strauss does not agree that the squad has lost its strength in depth as a result.

"A lot of things change when the international players are away. You have fewer numbers at training for a start so you can’t run game-type scenarios with 15 versus 15, and little things like that filter into the preparation," he said.

"We do have very good depth at the club but we’ve been unlucky with injuries – we had no fit second rows at one stage – and so have had to bring in quite a few new guys, some who are from amateur clubs and are stepping up. And while they have been great and I see fantastic potential there, it doesn’t always click in one week. You can’t learn an entire playbook or lineout calling book in a week for instance.

"It’s little things like that that make the teamwork a bit more difficult, integration doesn’t always happen quickly, but what we’ve impressed upon the squad is that this is all opportunity. It might not be easy straight away but it’s about seeing every lesson, every mistake, every game as a big opportunity to learn and to show what you’ve got.’

‘We know that there have been some poor individual performances, and there’s no doubt that when you lose players of the quality of the international guys – and we are losing more all the time because of how much we’re improving – it does have an effect. But you can only look forward and get out and put it right.

"I don’t think it is a reflection of the depth of the squad. It has just been two bad performances and it is just unfortunate that timing-wise it has looked like that."