Scotland’s professional teams had been operating in such different environments ahead of last weekend’s derby that it was legitimate to question the value of the 20 tries Edinburgh had scored at BT Murrayfield as compared with their opponents’ tough defeats in the European Champions Cup.
The nature of their victory has rightly fuelled belief in the capital, then, that real progress is being made.
“That gives us confidence we’re moving in the right direction,” said Stuart McInally, who had captained them to their win and collected the man-of-the-match award along the way.
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“We’ve had some good wins recently and we’re aware they were against teams in the Challenge Cup while Glasgow were playing in the Champions Cup, playing statistically better opposition, but it’s nice to come up against a team that were unbeaten in the league and to really put a marker down that we’re here to compete.”
It was a day on which Glasgow and their supporters had expected to match the tournament record of starting a season with 11 successive victories, but instead produced further evidence that teams have worked out how to beat them.
The way they had lost all four of this season’s European Champions Cup matches had already raised those questions and the fact that 14-man Edinburgh were able to adopt similar tactics to those deployed by Exeter Chiefs, Leinster and Montpellier, in bullying the Warriors pack after falling behind, to prevent them from imposing their all action game, seemed telling. All the more so because, for all that Glasgow have long been considered to have a considerable personnel advantage over their closest neighbours, this was their fifth defeat in six matches.
With another derby looming immediately, McInally was obviously loath to start making claims about having worked out how to win these matches, but clearly they will be out to do something similar at Scotstoun on Saturday.
“We have a strong game plan going into these games, we know exactly how Glasgow want to try and play and they’re very good at it and very dangerous, but it can be a downfall if they try and play too much,” McInally observed.
“I felt they had some good attacks at times (but) the last pass didn’t stick. On another day against another team, the pass sticks and they win with a bonus point, but we applied enough pressure that we came down on the right side of it.”
One of the club’s few survivors of the season which saw them reach the European Cup semi-final he is well placed to put into context a victory that had been achieved against the odds, trailing 7-0 when reduced to 14 men as Simon Berghan was red carded little more than five minutes into the match.
“I’d say that was the best club game I’ve been involved in, just the whole occasion, the atmosphere, the crowd, and then just the task on our hands after the red card,” was McInally’s assessment.
“It was just really good messaging from everyone throughout the game, the confidence we had at half-time. We spoke a lot about that before the game, let’s not worry too much about the result, let’s just put Edinburgh rugby’s best game out there, which we managed to do.
“We adapted well and effectively our game plan didn’t change when we went down a man. We just tried to look after the ball, and we probably looked after the ball a wee bit better than they did in the second half, then managed to get a few penalties which got us in this corner.”
McInally was proud of the rearguard action which saw Edinburgh hold out in the closing stages of the first half to turn just 7-3 behind and even more so of the way they responded when they went 17-6 behind around the hour mark and, rather than accepting that the result was beyond them, battled their way to the other end to force the score that got them within range to steal the victory in the dying stages as they did.
“It’s a sign that we’re starting to believe in ourselves a lot more,” McInally said of the first of those Edinburgh tries.
“We didn’t talk about the scoreboard under the sticks (after Glasgow’s second try) we spoke about putting our best game out there, playing what was in front of us and trying to be physical.
“It helps us believe in ourselves a lot more. It’s something that we’ve struggled with in past years, that we can compete at the top. Glasgow are one of the top teams in the comp if not the form team, so it was nice to beat them.”
Satisfying as the victory was he believes there is scope for further improvement.
“I think we’re still some way off (from playing at our best),” said McInally.
“It was tough with 14 men. I don’t really feel we put our best game out there in terms of 15 men, but given the circumstances it’ll go down as one of the great Edinburgh wins against Glasgow.”
However, he also accepted that it only means they will be up against even more motivated opponents in Saturday’s return fixture that Glasgow have to win if the 1872 Challenge Cup is to go to a decider in Edinburgh in April.
“They’ll be smarting after that, they’ll want to put it right and disappointed with the result given they were a man up for the whole game, but they were going to lose that unbeaten record at some point, so we’re just really pleased with the win,” said the Scotland hooker.