Alan Solomons, the Edinburgh coach, admitted he faces a "massive job" in the Scottish capital, with this six-try drubbing at the hands of the Ospreys bringing his already obvious problems into sharper focus.
While Glasgow are showing they can compete with the best of the Celtic competition, Edinburgh face falling further behind if Solomons and his team cannot turn things round. They were not awful all the way through - some individuals such as David Denton and Tim Visser were even occasionally quite good - but the overall package was barely threatening.
Ospreys were in control from an early try right through until a solo length-of-the-pitch score by outside half Matthew Morgan rubbed salt into Edinburgh wounds. In between, Ospreys steadily increased their lead, landing the try bonus point early in the second half. Even a trademark Visser burst through the middle and five points from the boot of Harry Leonard never threatened the calm of the home side. It is fair to say that Solomons had reasons to be a worried man when he talked after the game. "It's a big job," he admitted. "The last two years have been disappointing.
"There was that good Heineken Cup run, but your bread and butter is the PRO12 and that's what you have to look at to see how you are doing as a team. The last two seasons would not have been as people would have wanted. It's a massive job.
"You just have to keep working at it. Our kick execution was poor, our aerial skills were poor and our passing and handling skills weren't good enough. We just have to keep working on those things. I wasn't here in pre-season, which isn't ideal. It's the first time for that to happen in my coaching career and I've not heard of it too often that guys come in at the start of the season.
"It's not just me. Our strength and conditioning trainer and our defence coach came in after me, so we've come in very, very late. We've played no part in pre-season and in the preparations for the season, which makes a massive difference.
"I've told everyone we have to have a pre-season in season, using the first two months to have our pre-season, which makes it very difficult. This is only our third competitive game, but by November when we finish this block of matches I think I'll have a fairly good handle on everything.
"We made 34 errors in the game and that is far, far too many in professional rugby, especially against a well-drilled and experienced team like Ospreys. You can't take anything away from an Ospreys side that played very well. They are a very good and very experienced team, with a lot of British and Irish Lions players and they fully deserved the win.
"But we made a rod from our own back with the an error rate that was through the roof."
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