Macca delighted to match Warriors

SCOTLAND’S pro 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 compared with their opponents’ tough defeats in the European Champions Cup.

The nature of their victory has rightly fuelled belief in the capital that real progress is being made.

“That gives us confidence we’re moving in the right direction,” said man-of-the-match Stuart McInally, who captained them to their win.

“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. 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 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 bully the Warriors pack after falling behind seemed telling.

All the more so because, for all that Glasgow have long been considered to be superior in quality to their closest neighbours, this was their fifth defeat in six.

With another derby looming, McInally was 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 but it can be a downfall if they try and play too much,” McInally said. I felt they had some good attacks. 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.”