Ben Cairns will have a scan on his damaged left knee tomorrow but is certain to miss Edinburgh's final pre-season friendly against Bath at The Rec this weekend.

Ben Cairns will have a scan on his damaged left knee tomorrow but is certain to miss Edinburgh's final pre-season friendly against Bath at The Rec this weekend.

The centre, who made a real impact in Argentina this summer when he won his first Scotland caps, suffered ligament damage midway through the first half of Saturday's win over Guinness Premiership champions London Wasps at Murrayfield.

While he left the pitch vertical, rather than on a stretcher, he did have to be helped by two of Edinburgh's support staff as he hobbled off and he was still on crutches yesterday.

Consequently their spokesman yesterday confirmed that he will have it checked to establish the extent of the injury and in a bid to find out how long he is likely to be sidelined.

It was one of the few disappointments for the club after a surprisingly stylish game of rugby, considering it was their first serious work-out of the season, played in front of an even more surprisingly large audience of more than 4000.

Andy Robinson, their head coach, did acknowledge that there had been some clear indicators of areas to work on. "We have not done a lot of lineout work and that showed," he said. "We were put under a fair bit of pressure at the scrums as well as the lineout and at times we didn't handle that as well as we'd want to.

"However, I thought it was a really good spectacle and Bath will be the same this weekend because they want to play rugby, too."

While Robinson worked closely with Sean Lineen, the Glasgow Warriors head coach, when assisting Frank Hadden on the tour of Argentina, a difference in outlook seemed to be demonstrated over the weekend.

While the Warriors turned down all their chances to kick penalties as they lost narrowly to Bristol, who kicked everything that came their way and ground out a result, Edinburgh kicked an early penalty to claim the lead before setting about trying to break down the Wasps defence.

As both Lineen and Robinson have noted, the outcome of these pre-season matches will mean little once they get into Magners League action next week.

Edinburgh's outlook, though, seemed to be more effective last weekend not only in terms of helping them claim a confidence-boosting win but in earning them the right to play the game they wanted to by letting the opposition know they would be penalised for infringements.