Frustrating Glasgow is the way to dominate them, believes Hamish Watson, as Edinburgh intend a repeat dose at Scotstoun to follow their 23-7 win at BT Murrayfield last week.
The Scotland flanker had an outstanding game on Saturday leading Edinburgh’s smothering defence in a gameplan drawn up by Richard Cockerill and his coaching team that worked almost perfectly, but winning away from home has been Edinburgh’s problem this season and the club have just one win in Glasgow in 15 years.
But with the victory away at Newcastle – on a similar 3G pitch to that at Scotstoun – in the Heineken Cup just a fortnight ago, Edinburgh are starting to gear up, says Watson.
“We know what we can do when we have our full team out and it is really promising,” he said. “We would not have wanted to go into Glasgow without an away win, for sure.
“But we have had a lot of away games we could have won, it is not like we go away and just crumble. We have a good team and as we saw this weekend, if we stick to what we do well, they will struggle to beat us.”
The setpiece was the key for Edinburgh at the weekend, believes Watson, and their success in frustrating Glasgow when they had the ball.
“You don’t play a team like Glasgow and expect everything to go your own way, there were moments in the game that could have gone either way, but our pack really fronted up and our set price was better than theirs on the day,” he added.
“We put also them under a lot of pressure and they could not play the game they wanted. Glasgow get very frustrated when they can’t play the game they want.
“We went into the game wanting to frustrate them and that is what we did. We knew that if we put defensive line speed on them and tried to put them under a lot of pressure they would try to force things.”
That worked from early on with Glasgow on the back foot at 13-0 down just before half-time.
“After the first interception and our early points they tried to force things a bit. They were chasing the game and were going to try to chuck a few things about.
“It is credit to all the boys who were out there that we kept them out, not giving up a bonus point or or anything, wanting to keep them out when it was 23-7.”
Other than the growing confidence another win brings, Watson doesn’t think the same plan will work as well at Scotsotun.
“Last year was a weird game, it wasn’t a smashing or anything at 17-0,” he said. “We got parts of our game wrong that day.
“They will be gunning for us this week after a big win like that. A lot of their stuff did not go right so we will expect them to be on top form next week.
“All went to plan this week for us but at their place will be a totally different story, they are pretty good at home like we are but if we play like we did in this game we have a really good shot of beating them away from home.”
