A WRY smile crept across Kenny Murray’s face as he was asked to evaluate the benefit of his Glasgow Warriors side having gone toe to toe with one of the heavyweights of European rugby as compared with the confidence Edinburgh will have taken from the try sprees they have been engaged in against lightweight opponents.

“It depends what coach you ask,” observed the assistant coach of a side that has yet to lose in the domestic Pro14 this season.

“I’m sure Richard Cockerill (Edinburgh’s head coach) will be saying they were able to rest a few players for this game, whereas for us it’s that we played against the best team in the French league, a real physical group of men. We’re pretty battle-hardened from that game. We didn’t suffer much injury wise other than some bumps and bruises, so we’re in a really good place physically from the game at the weekend.

“We’re not going to contrast us losing with them winning because for me it’s apples and pears. They’re playing a Russian team and scoring 78 points; we’re playing the best team in the French competition as the results show..

“So, for us it’s about looking at what Edinburgh do and we’re spend a lot of time analysing what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, where the opportunities are and we’ll build a gameplan based around that.

“I probably won’t even look too much at the Russian game in terms of my preview, I’ll look at the games they played before against London Irish and the Ospreys, games where we can take a lot more from it.”

Murray noted that he had read a recent article which claimed that Montpellier’s back division is the biggest in world rugby and, for all that Glasgow’s two defeats have ended their European Champions Cup campaign, they were by no means blown away so can take something from that.

He did admit to some concern about the way their pack has been targeted in the course of a European campaign that has seen them set the pace in every match, only to relinquish leads in all four matches, however he also warned that those pursuing such tactics may get caught out.

“It’s an area we need to improve and Edinburgh may decide that’s how they want to go, but at the same time we defended drives really well at times and forced turnovers, so it’s a gamble if teams want to do that against us.”

What adds a new dynamic to this season’s derbies is that there are new men in charge of both teams this time around and Murray, who has been joined on the Glasgow management by Jason O’Halloran and Jonathan Humphreys, who have moved over from the Scotland set-up, as well as head coach Dave Rennie, while he has seen a considerable change in the way their Inter-City rivals are going about their business.

“They do play a lot more rugby,” he said. “I’ve been doing the preview for our defence looking at their attack and they definitely mix it up a bit and try to play with a little bit more width than they used to.

“They are physical. I think [Cockerill’s] got that into the team and you look back to the autumn Tests, there were a lot of Edinburgh players involved, so we’re really clear about the challenge we have this week, particularly up front.”