Edinburgh’s best is still “some way off” but the club has confidence they can compete at the top after their opening 1872 Cup win over Glasgow, believes Stuart McInally.
The Scotland hooker skippered the side to the dramatic 18-17 victory and was named man of the match, and while there was satisfaction and joy at beating their rivals in one of the most thrilling finishes the club has known, they know it’s only one step forward.
“It’s the best Derby win definitely, I’d say the best club game I’ve been involved in,” said McInally. “Just the whole occasion; the atmosphere, the crowd, and then the task on our hands after the red card.
“But there were no big speeches out there. We just got on with it. When you lose a man you all just have to give an extra 10 per cent each to make it up.
“But we had confidence. All along we spoke about not worrying too much about the result, just putting Edinburgh’s best game out on the pitch. And we managed to do that.”
But McInally thinks it was effort, resilience and sheer bloody mindedness that got them through, and that better rugby is still to come.
“I think we’re still some way off from that,” he said. “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.
“I know we’ve won five out of six but I don’t know if we have their number. 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 and I felt they had some good attacks at times, the last pass didn’t stick. On another day against another team, the pass sticks and they win with a bonus point, but today we applied enough pressure that we came down on the right side of it.”
A frenzied response is expected at Scotstoun in the second leg on Saturday, and Edinburgh wil be ready for it, vowed the hooker.
“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,” he continued. “But they were going to lose that unbeaten record at some point, so we’re just really pleased it was us.
“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 competition if not the form team, so it was nice to beat them.
“We have confidence we’re moving in the right direction, we’ve had some good wins recently, although we were aware they were against teams in the Challenge Cup while Glasgow were playing in the Champions Cup, they were 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.”
Edinburgh are back in the midst of another front row crisis with Simon Berghan set for a lengthy ban after the stamping on Fraser Brown’s head that resulted in a red card.
The capital side had Murray McCallum – normally a tight-head – playing as a replacement loose-head on Saturday while Matt Shields came off the bench, but Rory Sutherland is the only other fit prop in the squad heading into the second leg with Berghan out.
A PRO14 disciplinary panel will meet in Dublin on Thursday to determine any extra sanction against the Scottish internationalist.
