Five Edinburgh wins in the last six derbies may suggest that Glasgow Warriors have been playing into their neighbours’ hands but on yesterday’s evidence it is not going to force an immediate change of approach from the hosts at Scotstoun tomorrow.

Over the past few years the men from the capital have got a whole troop of monkeys off their backs, a first victory in the 1872 Challenge Cup for six years followed by back-to-back wins in the same season for the first time since the trophy was rebranded a decade and then, the ‘away’ leg of that double having been achieved at Murrayfield, a first victory in Glasgow for 14 years at the end of last season.

Glasgow have generally been considered to have the stronger playing squad throughout that period, but have a squad designed to play a high tempo game, whereas the Edinburgh pack, in particular, is better designed for an old-fashioned battle.

Yet as he anticipated tomorrow’s clash one of the more combative, but also more experienced members of the home squad, gave no sign of having any inclination to avoid going toe to toe with their closest rivals.

“To a certain extent that is just the nature of the derby,” said Rob Harley, their 27-year-old flanker. “I don’t know if you can take the passion out of it, I don’t know if you could, I don’t think you’d want to. It is just a necessary part of it.”

Naturally he believes that he and his team-mates can channel their aggression more effectively than they have managed in the majority of recent derbies, not least last weekend’s embarrassing defeat at the hands of an opposing side that played with only 14 men for all bar the first five minutes.

“It’s just directing it into the right areas and hopefully being the right side of aggressive and hopefully being accurate and deadly when you have the ball and not getting over-excited by it and making mistakes,” he observed.

If that comes across as a slightly naïve approach, there was a real danger of Harley compounding that impression with a simplistic sounding analysis of the area that caused Glasgow considerable problems this season.

“A mauling game is more down to the number of lineouts you have so that would purely be on how often the ball goes into touch,” he observed. “Edinburgh are obviously very good there but you are always going to have lineouts in a game and that is one of their main strengths. Any game they play against any opposition they are going to go to their maul. It’s good for us because we get a chance to come back and play against it again and hopefully right some of the wrongs.”

That may be so, but the number of lineouts also tends to be governed by opportunities teams have to kick penalties to touch, which in turn is down to the amount of pressure they are able to generate on opponents at breakdowns, with or without the ball. There is, then, an apparent danger that the pain of losing as they did leads to identifying the wrong things to right.

“It was tough to take,” said Harley. “That is why we are watching it back and trying to take the lessons from it. We are saying that when you win you should try and take the lessons but it’s easier to take the lessons when you lose. With a loss there is a lot to look at and improve on and that’s the positive that we get a chance to play the same team and hopefully improve. Fair play to Edinburgh, they played really well. Playing with a man down is one of the hardest things you can do in the game and they played really well given that challenge. So, if we look at that we can try and take some of those qualities, the determination that they showed, the physicality when they played a man down for the entire game and try and instil that into our game.”

In fairness there is an awareness that they cannot allow Edinburgh to get the upper hand in the combat zones as they have been doing.

“They have great players at the breakdown and we have to be good at adapting to that. If ball is slow how do we get quick ball? Where do we play? It is about playing our game and what is on,” said Harley.

All of which means moving the ball fluently, recycling quickly and seeking to generate a pace of play with which opponents cannot cope, but he admitted that knowing that does not itself represent having learned anything new.

“We look to do that against every team. That comes from getting quick ball, from being connected in defence and getting up fast. That is usual for us,” he said. “We have looked at what we did. We are just going to do it better.”