AFTER the thrill of swatting aside European super-power Toulon at the weekend, a different type of excitement was energising those arriving for Edinburgh duty at Murrayfield yesterday.

Players awaiting an opportunity to show what they can contribute saw openings begin to emerge.

Things have changed considerably since the days when a smattering of Edinburgh players joined a Glasgow-dominated national squad and, in spite of Magnus Bradbury having been sidelined with a serious-looking shoulder injury, theirs is the bigger contingent within Gregor Townsend's 40-man squad which will travel to St Andrews this week.

The capital club's domination over the national team contingent appears fully justified on the evidence of Saturday's 40-14 thrashing of the three-time Champions Cup winners.

For all that it will be a home-based 23 that gets this weekend off ahead of the meeting with Wales, due to Scotland’s exiles being unavailable until the second match of the autumn series as a result of international protocols, head coach Richard Cockerill expects to have several returned to him tomorrow before the squad flies off on a budget flight to Parma for the sort of treacherous fixture against Italian minnows Zebre that has often stalled Scottish momentum. His squad will, though, be stretched to the limit.

“It will be interesting. We could do with some back, because this morning we trained and we’ve got no second rows, not one senior back-rower trained, because Vili Mata has got some bumps and bruises and everybody else is either injured or playing for Scotland,” he reported.

“All our tightheads are there, two hookers, looseheads, all our locks, all our back-rowers. This morning, of the people normally available, there’s (Pierre) Schoeman and (Rory) Sutherland training. That’s it. (Dave) Cherry is the only hooker that has trained today. There’s (Pietro) Ceccarelli at tighthead with Jack Stanley. And then we’ve got academy locks. (Lewis) Carmichael is not fit, (Callum) Hunter-Hill is fit, with Jamie Hodgson who is a stage two academy player and Calum Atkinson, those are the three locks we’ve got available.”

He is anticipating worse to come when Bradbury, who ended Saturday’s match sitting on the bench with his left arm in a sling, gets his diagnosis, observing that: “He’ll have a scan today, so we’ll find out the extent of that, but I don’t think it will be good news.”

In many ways it is a real shame that after many years of waiting to get back in among Europe’s elite, they cannot collectively build on that win over Toulon which followed a fine performance in Montpellier and Cockerill knows an advantage is being handed to Newcastle Falcons, their opponents in a December double-header in the Champions Cup who have done even better in beating both French giants and will be affected by far fewer international calls. He is not, though, inclined to anything other than taking such situations in his stride and is also never averse to pointing out the problems facing the opposition.

“The difficulty we have is that we’ll lose our guys now for five weeks and post the Argentina game the lads that start the Argentina game have to have the next week off. So, that’s six weeks of not being with us,” Cockerill pointed out.

“So, we go from Toulon straight to Newcastle having not had our players for six weeks and there’ll be a substantial number of those who will have played four back-to-back internationals, in some way shape or form.

“It doesn’t set up, then, for a perfect scenario for preparing. Newcastle, I’m sure they’ll lose a few, due to various nations, but they’ll be together most of the time, but they’ve got the quandary of – they’ve gone well in Europe, but they’re bottom of the Premiership.

“There’s no point in getting out your group and getting relegated, is there? So, they’ll have other concerns as well, but, as they’ve shown, they’ve picked a mixture of teams over the last two weeks, and they’ve done very, very well, so, the group’s alive, isn’t it? But we’ve still got to go to Toulon, Montpellier have got to come here, whilst Newcastle have got to go to Montpellier.

“Montpellier are still in this. You can still lose your first two, and still qualify, so Toulon are also still in this. So, if someone can win that double header, then that puts them in good shape. Maybe 18 points will get you out of this group as second place, or it might win it, you just don’t know at this point.”

This next month or so will meanwhile be an opportunity to examine his squad and he clearly reckons they can remain competitive throughout.

“You’d like to build on momentum. Circumstance to an extent has gone against us (but) if you have (Fraser) Mackenzie and (Lewis) Carmichael in the squad, you have two very good second rows,” said Cockerill.

“You’d expect (Ross) Ford to come back, you’d expect at least one of those tightheads to come back, back-row wise Luke Hamilton has been called up because of Bradbury, you’d expect him and Crosbie to come back, maybe Jamie Ritchie. By the time we get to Friday we’ll have a decent enough team, it’s just we don’t get any time to prepare.”

Typical, too, that there was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that he and his backroom team might be as well to treat the trip to Northern Italy as a long weekend break following their recent exertions.

“We’ve tried coaching, that’s not always worked, so maybe just turning up and playing will be better for us,” he laughed.

Some in the camp might relish such a prospect, but that will be the day.