The most important game of the season so far. That is how Alastair Kellock, the Glasgow captain, has labelled tomorrow night’s home clash with Saracens in which a win would see Glasgow through to the quarter-finals of the European Challenge Cup, the first time in their history that they would have qualified for the last eight of a European competition.

Better still, a win by eight points or more could guarantee the Scots a home draw in the next round, depending on results elsewhere, and Kellock believes that such a high-profile game could help to raise the awareness of the club in the city community, which has anyway been getting behind them with more and more enthusiasm as the season has gone on.

“We had a good travelling support last week out in Parma, and the crowd at our home games has been getting steadily noisier all season,” Kellock said. “Now we want a big scalp to show what we are capable of at this level. I know the Challenge Cup is not as high profile as the Heineken Cup, and it is one of our targets for the season to win back a place in the bigger competition, but this is probably good for us at the stage of development that we are at now, and Saracens are a big club.”

The reverse fixture between the sides, which Saracens won 28-23, was in fact something of a breakthrough for Glasgow. Despite huge problems in the scrum, they still managed to score a couple of tries themselves while the English side crossed the Glasgow line only once — they were also awarded two penalty tries for scrum offences. It was the game where the backs, in particular, got over their early-season wobbles and the confidence started to return.

“We have done a lot of work on the scrum since then and brought in Peter Wright as a specialist scrummaging coach, so we are confident that we have improved a lot in that area,” Kellock said. “We know that Saracens have one of the toughest scrums around, and we are fully aware that they will look to pressure us in that area again, but we believe we can deal with it now.”

At least Glasgow have a reward on offer from their game, while their city rivals across in Edinburgh have the more difficult task of motivating themselves to take on Agen in a dead rubber in the Heineken Cup.

Ideally, Lynn Howells, the coach, would have liked to use the opportunity to blood a few fringe players before he loses most of his squad to international duty over the RBS Six Nations Championship, but he has so many injuries that he does not have that luxury.

“I have eight players out injured and with 15 at Scotland training this week, I had five players out for training at the start of this week,” he said, acknowledging that the only solution was to add substantially to his pool of players for next season, when Edinburgh are expected to contribute between 12 and 15 to the Scotland World Cup squad.

One player who is looking forward to the game is Rob Dewey, who damaged cartilage in his knee making his scoring debut for Scotland in November. He has been out since then but, as predicted, will be named in the Edinburgh team today, giving him two matches to establish his match fitness and make a case for regaining his international place from Andy Henderson.

“It’s just great to be back, I’ve been going stir crazy in the physio room,” he said. “I’m looking forward to playing again after what has been a frustrating period out of the game. You just have to get past that and do the work to get the movement in the leg.”