Whoever comes out on top at Llanelli tomorrow, it will be portrayed as a backlash. The Scarlets are coming off the back of a week where they lost their Heineken Cup semi-final and went on to defeat in the Magners League at their west Wales rivals, the Ospreys, while Edinburgh’s last game saw them concede 48 points away to Cardiff Blues and Allister Hogg, the captain that day, admits it was a painful experience.

“We learnt a lot about ourselves that day, mainly about where we don’t want to be as a team,” he said. “I think that is something we can take from it. We don’t want to be there again, we don’t want to perform like that again for Edinburgh.”

Hogg will again be in charge of the side at Stradey Park, and though they have been able to strengthen the backs, with Rob Dewey returning on one wing, Simon Webster on the other and Marcus Di Rollo at outside centre, the pack is weaker. Scott Murray has failed to shake off a wrist injury, forcing Lynn Howells, the coach, to move Alasdair Strokosch up from flanker to fill the berth.

That at least means a recall for Simon Taylor, who has hardly featured for Edinburgh since announcing he was moving to Stade Français in the summer, with Hogg shifting from blindside to openside flanker.

Both Hogg and Howells know that the Scottish Rugby decision to axe the Borders club has suddenly thrown the pressure on to them, with Glasgow overtaking them in the league. If things stay as they are, and there were to be only one Scottish side in whatever form of Heineken Cup takes place next season, it would cause real difficulties for the independently owned club.

Glasgow went into the weekend with the momentum behind them and a lead on the number of games won, score difference and tries scored — the first three tie-breakers should the teams remain locked on the same number of points at the end of the season.

Llanelli are still technically in the hunt for the Magners League title but, in reality, would need an extraordinary sequence of results to get there and would lose even a technical interest if they should be defeated tomorrow. Though they are a couple of places ahead of Edinburgh, they are safe as far as qualification for next season’s European competition goes, and for them the match is more about pride in front of their own supporters than having anything significant at stake.

On the whole, the games between these two sides have gone the way of the home team, though Edinburgh did win 21-15 at Stradey in 2005; Edinburgh won the reverse fixture 24-14.

“We’ve obviously highlighted a few problems that we had. We didn’t think they were problems beforehand, but hopefully we can rectify them,” Hogg added. “It was tough last week for the boys. A lot of them were down after that performance, but they’ve bucked up this week and have trained well.”

The big difference between the sides is that Edinburgh have had a fortnight to get over their last match, and it will be the third game in eight days for Llanelli. To a degree, however, that has been nullified but the strength in depth at Stradey that allowed them to field virtually a second-string in midweek and still put in a competitive performance, while the Scots are leaving 12 injured players behind, half of them current internationals.

For Howells, who admits that Edinburgh would have struggled to match the Scarlets playing schedule, the important benefit of the time off has been mental more than physical. “We’ve been pretty fortunate to have had a fortnight to get over the result,” he said. “The first week we beat ourselves up — management, coaches and players alike. We deserved everything we got after a result like tha. But we got it out of our system in that first week and have moved on. This week we’ve been more positive.”

Edinburgh: B Cairns; R Dewey, M Di Rollo, M Dey, S Webster; D Hodge, G Laidlaw; A Jacobsen, A Kelly, G Cross, A Strokosch, F Pringle, S Taylor, A Hogg (captain), D Callam. Replacements: S Lawrie, D Hewett, C Bentley, R Rennie, J Senio, P Godman, L Lopez Fleming.

Table

P W D L F A T B Pts
*Leinster 17 11 1 5 413 330 46 9 55
*Ulster 18 10 1 7 397 276 42 9 51
*Ospreys 16 11 0 5 365 299 38 6 50
*Cardiff 16 10 1 5 338 244 37 6 48
Llanelli 17 9 0 8 391 380 48 7 43
*Glasgow 17 9 0 8 361 345 35 5 41
Edinburgh 17 8 1 8 299 330 28 7 41
Munster 17 9 0 8 291 258 26 4 40
Dragons 16 7 0 9 290 289 29 7 35
Connacht 18 4 2 12 316 432 30 6 26
*Borders 17 2 0 15 171 449 13 4 12
*Does not include last night’s results