As he awaited official confirmation of the astounding achievement he had just brought about Chris Dean was momentarily unsure whether he had done it on Saturday evening.
The 23-year-old centre had emerged from unfamiliar territory as Edinburgh’s 14 men made their last bid to produce one of the great upsets in recent domestic history by beating a Glasgow Warriors side that had not lost in 10 previous Pro14 matches this season, pilfering the ball from the back of a maul to take a chance on catching the opposition by surprise.
“I did not know I had scored myself,” he said. “I looked at the ref running over to give it and we were all pretty excited we had done it. It had been a long time since I had been at the back of a ruck.”
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It was a strange moment as Glasgow Warriors defenders seemed to stop playing after referee Frank Murphy awarded a penalty against them but naturally waited for an advantage to accrue. All the more so, it transpired, because the risk Dean took was even greater than was immediately apparent since he claimed to have been unaware that it was a free play.
“I didn’t even know (advantage was being played). I thought I am just going to have a go here. I can see the line,” he said.
He had, however, had the awareness to realise something was on.
“I had joined the maul and Neil Cochrane had it at the time. He was saying, ‘take it, take it’ and I did. I had been eyeing up an opportunity to go before but advantage was given and luckily they switched off and made it easier. There was a bit of ambiguity actually. I was looking at Jonesy (Glasgow winger Lee Jones) and he almost switched off and then I thought to myself, ‘I’ll go for it anyway’ and touch it down. Lo and behold we got it.”
In many ways that moment summed up the team’s respective reactions after the point at which the match should have been handed to the visitors. For all that Simon Berghan’s recklessness when his boot connected with Fraser Brown’s head at a ruck made the decision all but inevitable, there was a sense of disappointment throughout a stadium which was occupied by a record crowd for the fixture when the Edinburgh prop was shown a red card just five minutes into the contest. Glasgow having already sliced their opponents’ defence open with near ridiculous ease to let Huw Jones register the opening try, this would surely now become a rout on a playing surface well suited to their talents.
Instead the moment galvanised Edinburgh whose defensive line speed from that point maintained pressure to the extent that even on the rare occasions that Glasgow did break loose thereafter they were so anxious to capitalise that their handling repeatedly let them down. Naturally expectation of the worst was shared on the Edinburgh bench that the man who was destined to win the game was occupying at the time.
“It is not a perfect situation to lose a man to a red card five minutes into a game. The whole stadium had a bit of doubt and expected that Glasgow on their current form would have taken advantage of that,” Dean admitted. “But credit to the guys who were on the field at the time and for most of the game. They stuck it out, gritted themselves and put in a fantastic performance well above everybody’s expectations.”
As he took the field, just after Scott Cummings had scored the try that put the visitors 17-6 ahead and might finally have broken Edinburgh’s resolve entering the final quarter, there was consequently a sense of responsibility.
“When Glasgow scored that second try and we went back and scored against them the belief was there,” said Dean. “From the bench running on you need that belief. If you come on half-hearted that is when things go wrong.”
That they managed to turn it around was the latest indicator that new coach Richard Cockerill is toughening them up.
“That game shows we have grown as a club and created a character about us,” Dean reckoned. “Cockers said at half-time he didn’t really care about the result and just wanted to see the backbone we had been building on for the last 12 to 15 weeks and we did that with that performance and win.
“He runs a hard regime. Our standards are up there now. There is no slacking allowed. We have all bought into it. We are not the finished article but we will keep working as hard as we can.”