Heart and Soul Rugby Country is what they call this outpost in west Wales. Reality is what Leicester shipped in. And reality won. The Scarlets have been trying to run their way away from forward situations all season, but in truth there is no escape from the places where the ball is won.
The Tigers up front were formidable, both collectively and individually. Rob McCusker and Josh Turnbull played with the unquenchable energy and enterprise of youth for the home team, but Craig Newby and Thomas Waldrom and Louis Deacon played with the cruelty of experience. They had but one aim, to make this hurt.
Behind the torture chamber, Stephen Jones tried to bring an experience of his own, and Jonathan Davies is going to be a very good centre, but they were living on scraps. The longer the game went on, the more the Scarlets starved.
Considering that they were to take almost total control of the set pieces, Leicester started in the scrappiest possible way. They let the kick-off bounce and then lost the lineout, a false start that contrasted with their ruthless efficiency from then on.
The next time they made a mistake at a scrum it was on the stroke of half-time, when a bit of back-chat gave Stephen Jones a chance to land a penalty. He missed, which must have come as a bit of a relief to the Tigers front row. After so much good work, to hand three points to their opponents for a word out of place would have been a cheap gift.
How could it be, then, that at the interval the Scarlets had their noses in front? Well, their only reliable source of possession was retrieving Leicester's kicks downfield and turning them into counterattacks.
Quite why Leicester fed opponents who are genetically encoded to run was a bit of a mystery.
From one kick ahead, Rhys Priestland collected and fed Sean Lamont, the Scotsman who has prospered on this Welsh diet of opportunities in open play. After the wing's progress came a string of yards from Davies, who seems back on course after injury to play a part in the Six Nations. He ran and took out the last defender, sending Morgan Stoddart in for a try.
From the touchline, Stephen Jones converted, extras to add to his penalty. Against the run of the scrum and the stream of the lineout, the home team were in front.
With reminders from the half-time dressing room of the precious qualities of possession no doubt ringing in their ears, the Scarlets promptly let the restart bounce. This was an echo of the start of the match, but instead of being an aberration, this set the pattern for the rest of the game.
The chances to create counterattacks shrank; the squeeze up front became more throttling. This was going Leicester's way, and only the visitors' way. After Stephen Jones added a second penalty in the third minute of the second half, the traffic stacked up at the other end.
Anthony Allen spotted a mismatch when he found himself marked by the prop Iestyn Thomas, the break eventually leading to a try for Alesana Tuilagi. With their noses in front, Leicester went for the surge that would end the affair.
There was something of the illicit about the way the ball squirted out of a ruck to give Ben Youngs a race for the line, but the scrum-half's speed was genuine. If possession is priceless so is speed, and Youngs has it in abundance.
Flood kicked a penalty to make it safe, Steve Mafi scored from close range to make the victory emphatic, and Lamont collected a kick to score a try that made the pain less acute.
Instead, there remained only the dull ache that goes with being given a right old grilling up front.
It leaves the heavyweights of Perpignan and Leicester in dispute for ownership of the pool. And it leaves the romance of the Scarlets where it is always going to be in this cruel business: nowhere.
