WHILE Glasgow Warriors prepare for a fifth consecutive season in the PRO12 play-offs, Edinburgh look set for another lower-half finish. They might just sneak into sixth, if they beat Cardiff with a bonus point on Saturday and two other results go their way, but if they lose to the Blues they will be ninth - one place lower in the past two seasons.

Stevie Scott, Edinburgh’s assistant coach, put up a robust case this week when asked if the team had progressed this season. Whatever happens in their final game, he pointed out, they already have more points than they did last season, and that continues a run of improvements which has seen them inch forward year by year: from 32 points at the end of 2011-12, to 36 in the following campaign, to 38, then on to 48 last year. What is more, the team that comes sixth gets a place in next season’s European Champions Cup, so if they do pull off that improbable feat, Edinburgh will have justifiable cause to celebrate.

And yet, for all that a Champions Cup campaign is clearly something to look forward to for players, coaches and supporters alike, there is a strong sense that such an achievement would do no more than paper over the problems at the club. Problems that have festered for way too long, and, while connected with results on the field, are much more far-reaching.

The biggest symptom of the malaise at Edinburgh is the size of the crowd on match days. The capital is one of the biggest rugby cities in Europe: home to a good number of clubs, to schools in each of which hundreds of children play the game, and to tens of thousands of people who take an active interest in it. And yet the attendances at BT Murrayfield for Edinburgh matches remain pitifully small.

Not all the time, admittedly. When Glasgow come to town for the 1872 Cup, the crowd can soar to over 20,000. And a similar number has been reached when Edinburgh have got to the latter stages of cross-border competition.

But those one-off occasions, although welcome, only serve to show how poor the crowds are at other times. There is a big latent support out there, yet it can only be enticed along once or twice a year. The rest of the time only a faithful few thousand toddle along.

Edinburgh deserve credit for the fact that some of those who do turn up regularly are not from a traditional rugby background. Someone must be doing something right to attract fans who have never been in the habit of going to club games at Goldenacre or Malleny Park, Meggetland or Myreside. But that group is pitifully small compared to its counterpart at Glasgow, where a far larger proportion of Scotstoun’s sell-out crowds have no active previous allegiance to any other rugby team.

In Glasgow, they are proud of the Warriors, militantly so at times. They sing; they chant; they feel a real affinity with the players. You never get that feeling in the Edinburgh crowd.

Murrayfield is partly to blame, of course. Even with those highly respectable crowds of 20,000 and more, the national stadium remains two-thirds empty.

Twenty years after the game went professional and European competition began, Edinburgh really should have found a more suitable place to play. Even when the team have come out on top in a genuinely exciting match, standing around in this soulless bowl is a dispiriting experience.

Easter Road was tried in the late 1990s, and is still talked about from time to time as a possible alternative, but it was never satisfactory to either tenant or landlord. Meadowbank was if anything worse than Murrayfield when it came to trying to create an atmosphere, and, understandably, there has long been a reluctance on the part of Scottish Rugby to become too attached to one club ground.

In other words, there is no obvious solution. But that does not mean that there is not one at all - or that there has not been enough time to find one.

In addition to the difficulty in attracting more people to games, there is the question of what you do with them once they are there - in particular, after matches. A lot of the players take time to meet the fans immediately after full-time, going over to the stands to sign autographs and pose for photos and do all the obvious things that encourage supporters to feel a stronger affinity with their team. But they are allowed only a limited time to do that before being required to return to the dressing room, denying them the chance to form a real, lasting bond, particularly with young fans.

Let’s be clear: no one individual is to blame and there’s no point in seeking scapegoats. Such problems did not originate with the current squad of players, or coaching team, or marketing department or whoever else is responsible these days for community outreach work.. But they will persist until someone gets a grip of the situation and carries out a thorough reform of the way Edinburgh Rugby presents itself. And they will be there on Monday morning, as stark and intractable as ever, no matter what final league position the team is in.