Nick Scrivener highlighted where Edinburgh went wrong during the Greaves Sports 1872 Cup defeat against Glasgow at Firhill but believes the team can put it right in time for the return meeting at Murrayfield on Saturday (2 January, kick off 3.05pm, for tickets please click here or call 0131 346 5180).
Edinburgh’s hopes of retaining the intercity trophy were severely dented by the Warriors’ forceful performance with both Dan Parks and Richie Vernon impressing for the home side.
But assistant coach Scrivener says Edinburgh are more than capable of serving up an improved display on home soil and that the problems which surfaced at Firhill can be ironed out.
Scrivener said: “Every point matters and it is really important that, in front of our home crowd next week, that we get back on the front-foot and tidy up our game.
“We need to get back to winning ways and there is no better way to do that than by getting it right against Glasgow at Murrayfield.
“There are plenty of lessons to be learned and plenty of areas where we need to improve before next week.
“We don’t expect a magic response, but we do expect the players to analyse the game. Everybody has got a fair idea about where we need to improve, but we just have to make sure we put the processes in place and give the opportunity to the players to work out how they can improve.
“We need to fine-tune our accuracy levels so we can perform to the standards we’ve set next week. If we had won then we would have gone into first place in the league, but we have dropped a few places now.”
A lethargic opening 40 minutes from Edinburgh proved very costly, but Scrivener believes the men in neon could have still ended up winning – if they had raised their game in the second half.
He added: “We didn’t give ourselves an opportunity to get into the game. When you look at our set piece – our scrum and line-out were disrupted and with the re-starts we lost nearly all the contestable kicks.
“When you put all those factors together it was always going to be difficult. We never really got a chance to put any real pressure on Glasgow.
“We didn’t execute very well at all during the game while Glasgow put on the pressure.
“The remarkable thing was that, even though the first half probably couldn’t have gone any worse, we were still only 15-12 down at half-time.
“The game was still there to be won deep into the second half, but unfortunately we didn’t improve on the things that were letting us down and got us behind on the scoreboard.”
