ASK Jamie Ritchie about the best five minutes of his young life and he won't hesitate long. It has to be that period, the day after his 21st birthday, when he first fielded a phone call from Gregor Townsend inviting him to his first Scotland training session and then walked into an Edinburgh team meeting to be told he would be captaining his club side – again for the first time.
OK, it was only a pre-season warm-up match against Sale and they would be missing half a dozen key players, injured or rested after the Scotland summer tour, so he is far too sensible to read much into it, but it is still a demonstration of how new coach Richard Cockerill is prepared to put his trust in youth.
"The Scotland call-up was a huge surprise, a huge honour but my focus was always on getting a good hit-out with the Edinburgh lads," he said after the 24-20 defeat. "I think we did that in part, there were a lot of good things to take from the game but also things to work on.
"It was a huge honour to captain the side during the first half, I really enjoyed it. I tried not to change too much about what I did on the field."
The plan was always to make wholesale changes at half time, including rotating the captaincy to Fraser McKenzie, though an injury meant Ritchie played 20 minutes longer than was anticipated, and was still on the pitch when the new faces stepped up the pace to put the Scots into the lead against full-strength opponents.
They could not hold it, with the English team's forwards producing two tries that gave them a four point cushion before Edinburgh's final drive of the game got the ball over the line but they could not ground it.
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