It is a huge cliche but being an Edinburgh supporter is like riding a rollercoaster.
The lows are Mariana Trench-like at times. The highs can sometimes be a bit more like that wee stool you buy for your 3-year-old to stand on during toilet training.
However the gap between those two opposites still means that when something good happens, you can enjoy it especially when it involves confounding the “we’ll win by five tries” expectations of your oldest rivals.
Funnily enough the only folk complaining about it being a boring game are also the same folk who are suddenly more interested in the ‘Inter-City Cup’ than their long term goals. I guess it’s all about perspective.
Edinburgh’s perspective now has to be about being the disciplined and motivated team that they were against Glasgow at Murrayfield on a rolling basis. Much of which could be exemplified by Duhan van der Merwe’s aggressive yet legal tackling of Sebastian Canciellere into touch around the halfway mark in the first half. If the word has made it out to Duhan on the left wing we must be getting somewhere.
What would define success for this Edinburgh team in what remains of this season?
In season 2019-2020 we beat Glasgow at the same point of the year. We then went on to win our next five league games and even though the season was shortened by Covid we ended up on our highest ever league points total and narrowly lost the semi final to Ulster. Our win rate in the league that year was 78%.
So, equalling or surpassing that streak would be the kind of success that we can control. Replicating it with the fixtures upcoming should be possible if, and it’s a big if, we can harness the application we showed against Glasgow at the weekend and the flair we showed against Bayonne.
We have to learn how to win away. If we don’t then we could be looking at no more than eight wins from 18 games and that will not be enough to earn a play-off place.
There’s some Challenge Cup adventures in January and hopefully beyond but as for the league let’s hope we can enjoy what’s left of the ride