THE night may have been more about events 500 miles away and a week earlier in Paris, but after Edinburgh and Agen had paid their tributes to the terror attack victims in a moving ceremony at the Stade Armandie on Friday night, a game of rugby did break out and for the second week running, the power of the Scots forwards turned out to be decisive on the European stage.
In particular, the 27-6 win in Pool 5 of the Challenge Cup, was another notch in the victory log for their front row and another demonstration that if there is one area where Edinburgh can compete with any team, it is in their set-piece work.
"The scrums have been going well for the last few weeks, it is something we have worked hard on," was the reaction from Alasdair Dickinson, whose standing as a loosehead prop has never been higher than it is now that he is well into his 30s.
"The weather conditions dictated that there would be a lot of scrums and a lot of mistakes that led to chances in the set-piece. We just had to apply pressure and it worked well, so we are pleased."
As against Grenoble a week earlier, Edinburgh were able to turn that domination into a penalty try, which proved vital as they struggled to put their game together in heavy rain and with a strong wind behind them in the first half in France. Without that, the only scores before the break would have been the two Greig Tonks penalties that got the Scots going.
"It was frustrating, in the first half we had seen a couple of free kicks go against us so we had to be whiter than white and keep at it," Dickinson added. "We managed to do that, put them under pressure, and got the reward with that penalty try. It felt like about 20 scrums, but it was good to get the fruits of our labour."
Edinburgh followed up with two more touchdowns in the second half, but after a couple of frustrating matches in the Guinness PRO12, the players are telling each other that they must turn the performances of the last couple of weeks in Europe into wins in the domestic league.
For the forwards there is a particular frustration that they managed to take Munster apart a couple of weeks ago and still found a way to lose the game.
This Edinburgh are at home Newport Gwent Dragons, and Dickinson is adamant this is the start of his team putting their season back on the road again, with back-to-back matches against London Irish next month and the derby double-header against Glasgow in the 1872 Cup already starting to whet appetites in the Murrayfield camp.
The circumstances of the match in France may have been exceptional, but for Dickinson and his colleagues it was quickly back to normality and that means a match-winning set-piece.
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