Richard Cockerill strode into the media room at Murrayfield and shook everyone’s hand, warm, engaging, happy-clappy. A double-take was needed. Had he gone soft since moving north of the border, this scourge of disciplinary panels, a frenzy of anger with a docker’s vocabulary? A look at this weekend’s match schedule will tell you not, that the relentless competitiveness that fuelled a playing and coaching career laden with silverware has carried over into his first season at Edinburgh who face Glasgow Warriors on Saturday needing just a point from the day’s Pro14 action to make it through to the play-offs for the first time ever. A crowd of 25-30,000 is expected at Murrayfield to cheer on once-hapless Edinburgh.

“Maybe one day people will speak of Edinburgh and think of rugby first, not the f------ castle,” said Cockerill with a chuckle.

None of this has come about by chance. Nor has it happened just because the former England and Leicester hooker as well as its three-time Premiership-winning director of rugby is a driven, irascible force of nature. It is easy to focus on Cockerill the caricature and miss the nuances, the sharp-minded tactician, the schemer and the shrewd manager of men. Cockerill has achieved by design, not by fluke. Four days after being sacked by Leicester in January 2017 he was taken on by Toulon, initially as assistant coach. By the end of that abbreviated stint he had taken over and became the first Englishman to coach a club to a Top 14 final.