Edinburgh captain Grant Gilchrist believes the club can follow in Glasgow’s footsteps and win the United Rugby Championship, despite finishing in 10th place last season.
The capital club missed out on the play-offs, with a 31-6 defeat to Benetton on the final day of the season sealing their fate.
Gilchrist, who is now into his 14th season with the club, admitted it was "bitterly disappointing” not to be part of the play-offs.
He said: "When we reflect on all the areas of our game we weren’t a million miles away, but we can’t use that as an excuse. We weren’t good enough.
“We had to come back in this pre-season with the attitude that we have to be better, but also not losing sight of a lot of the things that we did do well.
“The review of that was pretty balanced, but underpinning it was the fact we didn’t achieve our goal of being top eight.
“So that has to hurt. And it certainly does from the players’ side, so we’ve come back in determined to be better.“
Despite the disappointment, Gilchrist said not everything is doom and gloom. Edinburgh won 11 of their 18 URC games last term – the same number as Ulster and Benetton, who finished in sixth and seventh, respectively. A lack of bonus points was their ultimate undoing.
The Scotland second row added: "It’s easy to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and think ‘We’re all broke, we need to change everything’. We watched the way we played last year, the teams we beat - we won a lot of big games. It’s finding a balance.”
And Gilchrist reiterated coach Sean Everitt’s view that Edinburgh can win the URC.
The 34-year-old said: “We know that the goal is to make the top eight, because then you’re three games away from winning the URC. That’s what Glasgow did brilliantly - they played their three best games when it mattered.
“And we didn’t do that. But that’s not to say our best performance isn’t good enough. We just need to make sure that on the bigger occasions, and more consistently, we bring the best out of ourselves.
“There isn’t a team in the URC that we haven’t beaten. But it takes a lot to do what Glasgow did. So, we have to look at ourselves. We can’t just say ‘because they did it, we’ve got the divine right to do it’.
“But it’s a balance. We’ve beaten the Bulls, we’ve beaten Glasgow, and they were the best two teams in the competition that season. But also when it mattered, Treviso away, we had to produce and we didn’t perform. We’re obviously not at that stage on the big occasions.
“Yeah, we missed some big players, but that’s not an excuse. We had a more than good enough team on the pitch that day to be better.”
Gilchrist has played in league and European semi-finals during his time with Edinburgh, while he missed the 2015 Challenge Cup final through injury. The Alloa-born lock admits that over his time, they have not been good enough in the big matches.
“We’ve certainly had a few years where there have been a lot of times, quarter-finals, semi-finals, where we haven’t underperformed, we’ve just always been edged out. That’s been the story of it so far.
“It’s hard to put a finger on it. It’s such fine margins. Once you get to knockout rugby, you’ve earned the right to be there, there’s no magic formula. It’s about performing in three games, and we haven’t managed to do that.
“Ulster in the [2019-20] semi-final here, we played really well, and then somehow we found a way to lose to a penalty in the last minute.
“There’s been a lot of those frustrations. But from my point of view you use that as fuel. If we’re not good enough, we look deeper at where we’ve been deficient and work at that, make sure that we’re better.”
Gilchrist, who turned 34 this month, also knows time may be running out if he’s to win a trophy before he hangs up his boots, although he has no plans to stop playing in the short-term.
“I’m not getting any younger, but I’m here, I’ve signed for another season, I plan to play beyond that,” he said.
“Every year is an opportunity and I’m going to give my all.
“I’d love nothing more than that [trophy] to be within my career span, but if I can look myself in the mirror every night or every morning and say that I’ve given my all every day, in every match, I’ll be content with whatever lies.”
Edinburgh’s league season begins with Leinster visiting Hive Stadium on September 20 before a two-match tour of South Africa to play the Bulls and Lions. Another of the South African franchises, the Stormers, visit Hive Stadium in round four.
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It is as tough a start as they could have been handed, but Gilchrist said it’s helped sharpen the focus during pre-season.
"Because we’ve got that [start], from the minute we came in in pre-season, there’s no time to waste.
“There’s no minutes to ease our way into the season. That has been at the forefront of all our minds from the minute we walked into the building.
"Every day matters, every session matters, every minute of every session matters. And that has been the attitude that we have to adopt when you’ve got the start of the season we have - which I think is actually a huge positive.”
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