SCOTTISH rugby has had more than its share of low points since the game went professional 20-odd years ago, but this weekend has been an indisputable high. First, Edinburgh completed the job of qualifying for the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup on Friday night, then yesterday Glasgow followed them into the last eight of the Champions Cup with a masterful 43-0 demolition of Leicester.

Edinburgh’s win over Timisoara was a formality - they had done the hard work by beating Harlequins in London a week earlier. Glasgow’s, conversely, was anything but, as they had to bounce back from a home defeat by Munster eight days earlier to win at Welford Road, which had witnessed only one defeat for the Tigers in their previous 34 European ties.

It was a fitting venue for the Warriors to reach the last eight for the first time, as back in 1997 they had lost 90-19 at the same ground. Glasgow coach Gregor Townsend, who had been playing not too far away for Northampton that afternoon, put the whole era in perspective after his team’s six-try triumph.

“It’s a great end to the chapter, from where Scottish rugby started in professional rugby and where it is today,” he said. “Twenty years ago, Glasgow were losing by 80 points. Ten years ago there wasn’t that much hope in the future of pro rugby, with one of the teams closing down and the other two not doing well. Now we’ve got a situation where we’ve had a huge number of fans down here and the team winning.

“Edinburgh got a great crowd last night, so it’s been a brilliant weekend. A weekend we’ll all remember.

“Leicester are a very good team, but the way we started and got that first try would have affected their confidence, and it gave us huge confidence that if we were accurate and worked really hard, there could be space there. That was one of our best-ever performances and it got its rewards in the end, when the players’ desire to win meant we managed to keep going for the 80 minutes.”

Not since Glasgow beat Munster in the 2015 PRO12 final have they put in such a complete performance, but Townsend was loath to say which of the two was superior. “The PRO12 final was for silverware. This was a big game where we knew if we won we’d go through and if we didn’t it would be a terrible disappointment.

“To win away from home is huge. This is a fortress in European rugby.”

The quarter-finals of both competitions are due to be played in the days straddling the end of March and the start of April. The small matter of the Six Nations Championship will intervene before then, but when he does convene his full squad again and get down to preparing for the last-eight clash, Townsend will approach that match with justifiable optimism.

“April’s a couple of months away. Whoever we play, we’ll be playing away, but we should take confidence from beating two excellent teams away from home in Racing and Leicester. The teams we’ll be playing against are obviously the form teams, they’ve won their pools, but come April I’d like to think we’ll be in a very good position to give it a crack whoever we play.”

Unsurprisingly, Leicester coach Aaron Mauger was left nonplussed by his team’s second heavy defeat in as many weeks. “It's a tough one to explain,” he said. “There was no lack of effort or desire: we just didn't execute things well enough.

“Glasgow were very good. They executed their game plan very well, and we didn't have the answers.

“We are clearly not good enough at the moment. To go down 43-0 at home is pretty painful. We’re going to have to sit back and reflect and do a lot of thinking about how we’re going to trigger a response to be the team we can be. Right across the board, we weren't good enough tonight.”