Scottish Rugby chiefs were left to hope it will be all right on the night when the RaboDirect Pro12 gets underway next weekend after Edinburgh were subjected to a humbling defeat at the national stadium at the hands of their English Premiership opponents.
Much confidence has been conveyed from both camps as a result of the extra spending they have been permitted, but five dress rehearsals have produced three defeats for Glasgow Warriors while this thrashing at Murrayfield was Edinburgh's second.
Ostensibly this is a powered-up Edinburgh set-up, so much so that Alan MacDonald, the 26-year-old Scotland back-row forward, announced yesterday that he is quitting to begin studying for a medical degree, after he was squeezed out of the squad. The starting XV last night included nine new recruits, but a near full-strength Northampton were always likely to provide a stern challenge.
Edinburgh's hope must be that a badly malfunctioning lineout is down to a lack of familiarity that will be addressed by Neil Back, their new forwards coach. He won the World Cup as a back-row for England and will not have enjoyed watching the home pack being marched backwards at scrummage time.
However, the areas for concern also extended to the ease with which the English team registered two tries in the opening quarter. The first came when, having over committed to defending their right flank, Edinburgh were easily overrun on the other side, with Tom Wood sliding over to score.
Even less palatable to the defence leaders on the team, however, would have been the way that burly Tongan prop Soane Tonga'uiha picked the ball up at a close-range ruck and strolled over unmolested.
The home response was confined to a Gregor Hunter penalty strike and they were lucky not to be further behind when, with their defence broken again after Vasily Artemeyev had been released down the left wing, Ryan Lamb mistimed the scoring pass to Dylan Hartley and threw it forward.
The deficit was kept to 12-3 at the interval, but after five minutes of the second half further sloppy defending around another close-range ruck allowed Hartley to crawl a couple of metres before stretching to the line.
The captain also registered his side's fourth try. Lamb this time allowed the Edinburgh defenders to run past the hookers before delivering Hartley the ball and allowing him to brush off the lightest of tackles four metres out.
Northampton's fifth try also resulted in the home team's numbers being reduced. When his side had been awarded a penalty wide on the right inside the home 22, Stephen Myler had realised that defenders had switched off on the other flank and sent a cross kick towards Artemeyev. The Georgian winger was struck dangerously in the air as he gathered the ball by the back-tracking James King but the Saints maintained possession and after Martin Roberts dived over for the score the sinner was invited to spend 10 minutes contemplating the error of his ways.
The 14 men soon conceded another try, George Pisi and Luther Burrell both showing neat sleight of hand in an attack down the right, the latter deftly sending Pisi's brother Ken over. Even when Edinburgh were restored to full strength it remained one way traffic. Ben Foden registered his side's seventh try, before Pisi's second of the night took Northampton past the half century.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article