Memory is the dodgiest of our mental faculties. You appreciate this fact as you get older and short-term memory becomes a trial and often disappears. Now, where was I?

Curiously, some old memories become sharper in focus, and things that happened in the dim and distant past can appear in the mind as if they had happened yesterday. 

Smartphones are a fabulous aide-memoire, but not everything that has ever happened in sport is in the archives and not every archive is available to the public – which reminds me, when are we ever going to get that Scottish rugby museum?

This weekend will see the second ‘half’ of the Edinburgh Rugby v Glasgow Warriors contest for the 1872 Cup, and while some disagree, this really is the oldest ‘inter-city’ match in the world. This match at Murrayfield is also the best example possible of a full-scale trial for the Scotland squad for the 2024 Guinness Six Nations which begins in just a few weeks’ time.

Try as I might, I can’t recall every scoreline of all the international trial matches that I watched,  but I do remember my impressions of several such games over the years, mostly back in the 1980s though my favourite was the trial match for the 1990 season between the Blues – the ‘probables’ and the Reds the ‘possibles’.  

What a performance the Blues put on. With the Hastings brothers in their pomp and a mighty pack displaying real aggression, they were more than 30 points up after an hour.   Chris Gray and Damien Cronin were immense, and coach Ian McGeechan was mightily pleased with the interplay between forwards and backs. John Jeffrey and Fin Calder were played in the Reds to give the side some sort of a chance, but the fact is that the Blues were just far too good and thanks to one database I believe the final score was 45-4.           

As they walked off the pitch I remember thinking that we had a squad of around 20 players who really could do some damage in the forthcoming Five Nations, but even a super-optimist like me could never have foreseen that the Grand Slam would be won in such memorable fashion against England in March that year.

Trials for the national team have been around for decades, and once they were indeed played between Probables and Possibles, I believe that at one point the colours were changed so that it was Blues v Whites. One story is that the colours were blue and white because the latter was Scotland’s change strip and the SRU didn’t have to invest in a third colour of jersey – and yes, all players had to return their strips after the trial.

Funnily enough, unless there’s some complication I haven’t heard of, the Warriors and Edinburgh will take to the Murrayfield pitch wearing blue and white respectively. Having established their lead at Scotstoun you might even describe the Warriors as the ‘probables’ and Edinburgh as the ‘possibles’, but that’s only in terms of the outcome of the Cup. 

For this is a genuine trial in which no quarter will be asked or given. With a few exceptions – the exiles Finn Russell and Blair Kinghorn – there is no one automatically selected for the Scotland Six Nations squad. All the candidates will be on display at Murrayfield and you can bet that they will all want to put on a display to show that their current form entitles them to selection.

I thought Glasgow more than shaded it at Scotstoun, and deserve their lead going into the decider, but I also detected that Edinburgh had a few players who were not 100 per cent and I expect them to be fully fired up. If they are to win, Edinburgh will need to cut out the indiscipline that saw Grant Gilchrist sin-binned, allowing the Warriors to stretch their lead and ultimately win by 12 points.

Glasgow will want to preserve their excellent run in the United Rugby Championship and I would not be surprised to see them really take the game to their hosts from the off – one more converted try early on would make Edinburgh’s task impossible.  

The Warriors’ devastating close-range mauls will be back after they misfired at Scotstoun but Edinburgh will get their share of possession and I would love to see Duhan van der Merwe and especially Darcy Graham be given the chance to run at their opponents. That would bring the Edinburgh crowd to their feet and it will need inspirational play by the likes of those two to turn around the deficit.

Above all, and given last week’s sad news about Ollie Smith being out for months with a knee injury, I want to see every player who takes part, even if only for a few minutes, return safely to the dressing room.