A series of glaring defensive calamities against Gloucester’s strike runners left Edinburgh’s Heineken Cup hopes in tatters at Murrayfield on Sunday.
The struggling Aviva Premiership side broke through a porous home defence almost at will in a nightmare first half.
The Cherries’ back three of Rob Cook, Martyn Thomas and man of the match Jonny May had a field day.
Edinburgh rallied in the second half and had the momentum and a man advantage for a key spell, but failed to punch in a score and ultimately Gloucester were more than worth the 23-12 away victory that keeps their qualification chances alive.
For Edinburgh, there were tries from Greig Tonks and David Denton and some defiance particularly from Grant Gilchrist and Greig Laidlaw but there seems no sign of the transition promised by head coach Alan Solomons, and the defensive structure looked almost inept at times.
The coach, however, felt that the second half was where his side lost the game.
“When we forced the yellow card and had the momentum inside their 22, a try would have made it 23-19 and that would be game on,” he said. “Although I wasn’t happy with the defensive errors in the first half, I didn’t feel that the game was beyond us.
“We also made 18 errors, turnovers and mistakes, in the second half which is just too many for a 40-minute half. That’s where I feel that we lost this game.”
Solomons signalled that Edinburgh might now be looking more at the PRO12 than their remaining Heineken Cup games.
“The odds are certainly against us qualifying,” he said. “There’s quite a bit of fatigue among the players after a concerted spell including the autumn internationals and we’ll look at that before next week.”
Elsewhere, Connacht produced one of the biggest upsets in Heineken Cup history with a 16-14 win in Toulouse.
Connacht were outscored two tries to one but Kieran Marmion’s second-half effort combined with 11 points from the boot of fly-half Dan Parks saw them triumph.
Four-time champions Toulouse notched tries in either half through Jean-Pascal Barraque and Thierry Dusautoir but they could not find a way to break down the Connacht defence again in the closing stages as they slumped to a rare home defeat in Europe.