IT’S the hope that kills you, they say. The feeling of unrealistic optimism that arrives towards the end of every summer, and niggles away at your better, more pessimistic judgment like some irksome Matt-Dawson-style scrum-half squawking at the ref.

Go on, it says. Buy that season ticket. Have faith. Believe. This time, things really will get better.

Shut up or I’ll slap your coupon, you want to tell it (and Dawson). But you succumb, and you buy that season ticket, and you muster some enthusiasm from somewhere, because that’s what sport is all about.

It’s the same feeling whatever team you support - with the exception, that is, of Edinburgh Rugby. In their case, it’s the lack of hope that kills you. And this year it has arrived at record speed.

Certainly, it has not taken long for the new PRO12 season to acquire a familiar look to Scottish eyes. Glasgow, with two wins and a bonus-point defeat from their three games, lie fourth, within touching distance of the leaders. Edinburgh, with a win and two losses, are in eighth, and just keeping their heads above water.

The Warriors have ended up in the top four for each of the past five seasons, while Edinburgh have been eighth or worse for each of the past six. It is a highly commendable record for Gregor Townsend’s team, and a thoroughly dispiriting one for Alan Solomons’ side.

What makes it worse for Edinburgh - and also encouraging for Glasgow - is that the positions were reversed at the start of last season, and that what seems so familiar to us now was not in fact the case around 12 months ago. While the Scotland squad were in Tewkesbury preparing to start their Rugby World Cup campaign - their first match, against Japan, was a year ago this week - Edinburgh got off to a flier in the league, winning their opening four games before suffering a first defeat at Zebre. By contrast, Glasgow, with more than 20 players away on World Cup duty, struggled for consistency and won only two of their first five.

Solomons’ team were unable to sustain that flying start, of course, but at least it provided some encouragement during the autumn for their supporters, and for everyone else in Scottish rugby who wants to see two successful teams. This time round, that traditional optimism was either not there at all as far as Edinburgh are concerned, or at best has already been extinguished.

For many observers, any spark of hope was snuffed out sometime in the second half of Edinburgh’s opening game in Cardiff - a match which they lost without even displaying much in the way of enterprise or creativity. True, they followed that up with a win at Murrayfield against the Scarlets, but that was perhaps no more than the most fleeting of false dawns: the Welsh team have now lost all three of their games and are playing well below their capability, while Edinburgh went on to resume normal service in losing at home to Leinster last week.

In those circumstances, it must be easy for those within the Edinburgh camp - the players, coaches and officials - to feel that everyone beyond their own small hard core of supporters is out to get them. You don’t need to be subjected to very much criticism before a persecution complex sets in, and Edinburgh have certainly had a lot of it in recent weeks.

In reality, though, there must be very few people within the game who actually want Edinburgh to do badly. Even those Warriors fans who indulge in ridicule of their rivals do so half-heartedly, conscious that it is just too easy.

Rather than outright opposition, the prevailing attitude towards Edinburgh is one of indifference, and that is a lot more dangerous. If everyone is out to get you, or if people go out of their way to write you off as useless, you can at least respond by adopting a siege mentality. It’s the mental equivalent of resistance training.

But if no-one really cares what you do, you have nothing to fight back against. Instead, there is the risk that you just drift into irrelevance, becoming little more than another slot on the fixture list.

At least, that is the perilous position which Edinburgh appear to be in at present. Their home crowds are small, and they do not have players within their ranks to get the turnstiles spinning at other grounds either.

It is not a healthy position for them, and it is not healthy for the game as a whole either. Yes, it’s great that Glasgow are doing well, but we need two competitive teams, not just one.

Scottish rugby is meant to be a pyramid: one national team, two professional sides, and then the club game spreading out below that. If Edinburgh flounder, a vital ingredient of that structure will be gone.

At the very least, they need to have something left to play for in the season when they move to Myreside in January, be it a place in the top six of the PRO12 or one in the knockout stages of the Challenge Cup. Surely, even for them, that is not too much to hope for.