“We had to be very physical and set-pieces had to be very good if you wanted to control the game, we had to control when they had the ball – and we struggled with that at time – but it was a big win for us. They came with their best side, as they said, and we played very well and we deserved to win.”

Richard Cockerill is obviously satisfied with the result and with the performance of the team, a dominant and solid performance who gave Edinburgh the win in the first 1872 Cup of the season.

“Physically we were very good across the board, scrum and line-outs, both in attack and in defence were very good and we didn’t give them any inch there. Defensively, I think our line was good and we worked very hard. Calum MacRae is a very good defence coach and he’s worked hard since he’s been with us, we saw that come out tonight. Our boys were very motivated, as they are against Glasgow, but we didn’t give them opportunity to settle and play on the front foot: we knew that if we could do that, they would struggle to create enough opportunities.”

“They make errors, but they’re high risk-high reward and if you let play like that they manage to hurt you. We managed to control that reasonably well tonight.”

“We wanted to slow the ball down at the breakdown and make it a contest,” continued Cockerill. “Every breakdown is a contest, if you give them front-foot ball they are one of the best in Europe in exposing you. So we knew that if we could stop them playing on the front foot they would have struggled a little bit.”

Edinburgh won the last three games they played, all of them massive games which could have “make or break” their season, but Cockerill does not think his players will be too tired after that: “Our players are professionals, and they are get paid to do their job during the week. All the good sides I have played in or coached, they rock up every week and put a performance in. We haven’t got a big enough squad to rotate massively because we’ve got a lot of injuries in key positions, especially around the back five of the scrum and the midfield, so our boys will freshen up and we are going to go to Scotstoun with pretty much the same team and try to win. It’s nothing new with that, we’ve been a protected species far too long up here – the real world is proper rugby, where you have to turn up week in, week out and perform. That’s the game.”

“It’s a lot easier on Monday morning when you’ve had a performance like that, but it’s important to keep ourselves grounded; last week against Newcastle I was upset with the team about how poor we defended, cause we were pretty average and tonight it was a good reaction to that. We got to do the same again next week.”

“It’s a great win for us, we need league points more than anything else so our next challenge is to go to Scotstoun and try and do the same thing. The games can be played in different ways and you can still be effective, it’s about winning games and we found a way to win tonight.”