Magnus Bradbury has made four appearances for Scotland, winning every time, yet there seems an awareness that the challenge facing him over the next two weekends will be of a different order.

The 23-year-old is among the majority of Edinburgh players in preparing for a first ever Champions Cup campaign, the club having failed to qualify previously for the competition since it was re-branded five years ago and the prospect of a trip to Vern Cotter’s Montpellier, followed by the visit of three-time European champions Toulon could hardly be more daunting.

“It is a great chance for us to measure ourselves against them and see where it takes us,” said the back-row forward.

“We still have room to grow and attacking it one game at a time and individually taking our own game out onto the field and see where it takes us.”

There have been promising signs from Edinburgh over the past year or so, not least in terms of the combativeness that their instinctively abrasive coach Richard Cockerill has demanded of them, but they know they have failed to maintain that in the manner of the best teams as Bradbury admitted.

“We can be a physical team when we want to be. It is about fronting up for 80 minutes rather than having a ten minute lapse in concentration that lets other teams back into the game,” he said.

“In the match against the Cheetahs we were all over them in the first half and we should have scored two or three more tries. Then those ten minutes post half time they scored two quick tries and we allowed them back into the game. For those ten minutes we switched off the physical side of our game.

“We should not be letting teams back into the game like that and should be looking to press them harder and score more points.”

The difference this weekend being that, far from looking to press home an advantage, it will take everything Edinburgh have to stay in contention against one of the leading teams in France.

“We know how they can punish us if we switch off,” Bradbury said of Montpellier.

“We know as a team how they are held in Europe and how they are going to play having played French teams before hand. It is down to us playing our game out there for 80 minutes and see where that takes us (but) obviously the game is exciting as a team and as individuals as we are playing one of the biggest teams in Europe.”

It is certainly a very different proposition to this time last year when the trips they were preparing for in the second tier Challenge Cup were to relegation-bound English Premiership side London Irish and Russian part-timer Krasny-Yar, however simply qualifying for the Champions Cup cannot be treated as an achievement in itself.

“The Champions Cup is where we want to be, but now the next step is to beat these teams and take another step forward,” said Bradbury.

“Nothing changes for us in our training week. It is about consistency of effort and consistency of what we put out on the field.

“It is all about what is in the team isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what other people say. It is about how we prepare and how we perform.

“We are a rugby team. We are a good rugby team. We have shown that in the past. I believe if we get it right we can beat them on Saturday.”

While, then, his coach has gone along with every commentator in the sport in agreeing that it would be a massive surprise if Edinburgh started with a win on Saturday, there is real ambition that in once again finding themselves drawn in a pool with a team propping up the English Premiership, as Newcastle are now doing and with Toulon also failing to hit the heights they have in previous years, losing five of their first seven matches, Bradbury reckons he and his colleagues are entitled to target qualification for Europe’s knockout stages once again.

“You take one game at a time, play as well as you can each week, then we have every chance,” he said.

“You look at the squad, there is a wealth of experience in every competition, apart from this one. So, it is about drawing on that experience and seeing where it can take the rest of the team.”