WINNING feels good but the real prize to come from Edinburgh's victory over Munster at the weekend is that it has helped convince the players their new coaches' tactics are working.
The have been through two months of having everything they thought they knew and were good at forensically examined, ripped apart and rebuilt. Now they can see why.
Or, as Omar Mouneimne, the colourful assistant coach put it: "It's a case of burning the bush to the ground, seeing what roots are left then recultivating the roots. There were a lot of things that needed to be redone; it won't be this season you see the fruit of that completely. We are still burning things."
This week the flames have a new stoker as well. Alan Solomons, the head coach, has asked Philippe Doussy, the man he brought in as skills coach at the Southern Kings, to do the same job at Edinburgh on a consultancy basis until the new year. Originally from Dax in France, Doussy has done most of his coaching in Italy - working with the age-group sides before moving to the national team, where he takes the credit for turning Mirco Bergamasco from a part-time hit-and-hope goalkicker into somebody his side could rely on.
Mouneimne said: "He brings skills and kicking, speed, execution specific to goal-kickers and box-kickers, which is something we need. I've known him for about three or four years and he is a good coach.
"His attention to detail is phenomenal and he can make a difference here, definitely, especially to someone like Harry [Leonard, the young Edinburgh fly half]."
The point is that in the middle of the fires of destruction the players can now see they are making gains, that there are solid foundations being put in place.
But Mouneimne is adamant that a showing good enough to defeat the Irish double Heineken Cup winners at Murrayfield will barely scratch the surface of the performance they need to hurt Perpignan at their intimidating home ground.
"This is going to be a very big test," he said. "What you want to see is whether the players can execute a game-plan regardless of the surroundings. That's the key. When you go to war, you don't go to war on your own home turf, literally.
"The Vietnam War, the Iraq War, was not fought in America; they go to foreign soil. So the mentality you've got to have is that the 15 or 23 guys are a unit and it doesn't matter where they are. The four lines surrounding them is enough, or it should be. That's the test for us: can we arrive at any ground, at any time, pitch up and do what we're supposed to do. That's the challenge.
"After they [Perpignan] lost [away to Gloucester] and our result favoured us, it will make them more wary than they would have been.
"We will have to step up 200% or we will be bullied. You can't afford to let them to get the ascendency. When we carry ball, they must go backwards; when we're tackling them, they must go backwards. You can't lose collisions.
"If it's a gain-line war that's pretty balanced for the first 30 minutes, eventually somebody has to get on top and we can't allow that physicality to get on top of us. They are renowned for their physicality and swallowing you up over time. We can't allow that to happen."
The big encouragement is that Mouneimne feels the coaches already have the players on their side, they know things had to change from the way they were in previous seasons when Edinburgh were finishing at the foot of the RaboDirect Pro12, and are working their socks off to make the changes.
"It's pleasing to see the leaders like Ross Ford [the hooker] and Greig Laidlaw [the captain] buying in," said Mouneimne. "Even a guy like [Tim] Visser who wasn't so good in the air before has been training hard on those skills. We won two or three vital balls in the air and we won turnovers to put them under pressure. All that makes you feel we're making progress quicker than we maybe thought we would be."
But it will all take time and one win, while it offers evidence of progress, does not mean Edinburgh are the finished article.
"We were porous in every single department," Mouneimne said. "The guys were not systematic and specific to detail. What we found was that there were no repercussions for making mistakes.
"What I mean is that you analyse the training and you identify mistakes. Then you say 'look, these mistakes are not going into the game' and follow up to make sure they don't go into the game. That's the negative side, but the positive side is that we have good-quality players here who have potential."
It's too early for celebration, but Mouneimne feels that inside the burning bush, there is just a hint of revival — at this stage that is a great step forward.
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