Aware of the potential implications of criticising match officials Hamish Watson was circumspect until he was informed that Richard Cockerill, his club coach, had accused Mike Adamson of refereeing the two teams differently.

“If he has already said it, I suppose I can… I did not want to say anything,” laughed the Scotland flanker. “When we watch it again it might be different but at the time we felt some of the decisions were a bit harsh.”

He acknowledged that his view was hardly likely to be objective, though.

“In the heat of the battle I thought some of the calls were pretty tough, but I’ll have to go back and watch the game again. I was playing and you do see every decision as harsh so I will watch it back and then make a proper decision on it.” said Watson, clearly aware that the latest interpretations of the tackle law can make breakdown calls very difficult for both players and officials.

He also recognised that the nature of the job he does for his team means playing on the edge of legality.

“It was tough at the breakdown and I did give away a few penalties but that is part of my role, I have to go for the ball and try to slow their ball down. It was tough, we had a few penalties against us today, but I will have to go back and watch it,” he repeated.

When he does he can also expect to gain confirmation of how he felt the overall game went, with Edinburgh showing more enterprise than in previous Inter-City derbies, in turn reinforcing their confidence that under Cockerill they are now developing options in their game that will make them less predictable and, as a consequence, potentially more competitive against the better sides.

“We are definitely closing that gap on the top teams and people are starting to realise that now,” Watson asserted. “For large parts of the game, we looked the better side, though we were not in the end result. Still, for large parts of the game, we looked good and were really threatening Glasgow which not many teams have come here and done. Normally it is a bit of a try fest here. We are definitely heading in the right direction.”

In saying so there was, of course, acknowledgement that they must learn from their inability to turn the pressure and opportunities they had into points since, as Watson pointed out, the failure to earn so much as a losing bonus point undid the good work done the previous week when they gained ground on the top three in their Pro14 Conference.

“We are still growing as a team, we are quite young and will learn from that,” he noted, however. “We have to learn when to give those last passes and when to hold onto it and go again next phase when they will be stretched. We were chasing the game a bit and maybe that is why we were chucking that last offload but linebreaks-wise some of the boys did really well to get into those positions. It was really good to show our attacking game was shaping up well, but we have to hold onto that ball.”