Cockerill's 14 men stand tall to end Warriors' unbeaten run

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It was a victory worthy of the great Leicester Tigers sides their coach played with in the nineties and noughties and Richard Cockerill was naturally cock-a-hoop, albeit quick to guard against over excitement with a result he rated worthy of comparison of any of the great individual victories he has been involved with.

“I’m just delighted with the effort and spirit, the pride and passion around what they’re trying to do,” he said.

“I can’t coach that; I can’t coach that will to want to do it. I can bully them a little bit at training to work harder, but the players should take the credit because they were very good tonight.

“However, they have got to do it next week now. That’s our next challenge. This was a one-off game and we can do that, but can we back it up next week with a proper performance; never mind the result, but we need a proper performance.”

By contrast, after suffering a first Pro14 defeat on his watch, opposite number Dave Rennie described the performance as the worst since he took charge and he admitted they may have taken things for granted after Simon Berghan was red carded five minutes into the match when Glasgow were already leading 7-0.

“Who knows what goes on in the mind but it certainly looks that way,” he said. “We lacked a bit of polish and we lacked the physicality required to win those sorts of clashes. We had a chance to put them out of the game and should have done it. If you let a team hang in there you can get hurt. It almost happened against Cardiff and it did happen tonight.”

In terms of the debate as to which team would be sharper on the back of their widely contrasting European experiences of the previous fortnight the game’s first meaningful attack had initially seemed telling. Awarded a penalty in their own half Glasgow kicked to touch on the right and from the lineout Tommy Seymour came in off his right wing and powered into a gaping hole in the defence then, once in behind, fed Huw Jones a pass that gave the centre the easiest of run-ins to keep up his exceptional strike rate at the national stadium where he has scored five tries in eight Test appearances.

Horne converted well and an impressive start became a commanding position three minutes later when, just as it looked as if Edinburgh were set to get on the scoreboard when awarded a penalty inside the visitors’ 22, the officials realised that something worse had occurred in the same incident.

The repeated replays constituted a slow rugby death for Berghan, the connection of his boot with the head of Fraser Brown, who was pinned at the base of the ruck, ultimately leaving referee Frank Murphy with little choice but to show the red card. His loss was compounded at the next scrum when they then had to sacrifice Scotland openside flanker Hamish Watson to bring on replacement prop Matt Shields.

A fired-up Edinburgh raised their energy output and managed to reduce the leeway with a penalty and the 14 men continued to give at least as good as they were getting, their defensive line speed key to preventing their opponents from capitalising on their advantage.

Glasgow finally started to impose themselves late in the half and were twice held up over the home team’s line, opting for a scrum in between times when awarded a penalty at unmissable range, which only made it more of a triumph for Edinburgh when they disrupted the third attempt at a push-over try, Viliame Mata scooping up the ball as it sprung loose. They looked to have learned a lesson from that when a powerful scrummage drive earned them a penalty on the Edinburgh 22 and they opted to take the points this time, but it was cancelled out by a long range strike from Hidalgo-Clyne soon after.

After all their resistance Edinburgh then conceded a second try with surprising ease as Glasgow kicked a penalty to the left corner, threw to Scott Cummings and Edinburgh’s bid to draw a penalty by standing off rather than engaging with the maul back-fired on them as he held onto the ball and wandered over the line unopposed.

However, Glasgow’s frailty in the same department was exposed a few minutes later when Edinburgh earned their chance to set up a lineout drive and they duly took it, initially mauling their way in close, then picking and driving a couple of times before replacement scrum-half Nathan Fowles then wormed his way over.

It was no more than Edinburgh deserved and it was a score which gave them the belief to produce that big finish and extraordinary result.