After abject failure, the only option is to go out and try to get things right. There can be no better opportunity to do that than when facing an opponent that is equally short on results and confidence. That is the task facing Edinburgh today when they travel to Castres, and Mike Blair, the captain, is demanding that his players take it.

“We know a massive opportunity went last week [in the defeat at home by Leinster],” he said. “To have gone to Castres with a win under our belts and a chance to go to two from two would have given us a fantastic opening in the [Heineken Cup] competition. Winning away may not put us back on an even keel but it would go a long way towards helping us forget about that game.”

The rule in the Heineken Cup is that to have any chance of making the knockout stage, you have to win your home games and snatch at least one on the road. After losing their first home match and facing the anger of their supporters, Edinburgh need victory today, and to follow that with at least one more away win while finding their home form.

As Blair acknowledges, the encouraging part is that Castres are bound to be equally short of self-belief. “From the footage we have seen they have played some really good stuff but have been similar to us, a lot of good rugby but the big errors are letting them down,” he said. “It will be a really good contest, they like to play rugby and we will look to move their big guys around as well. It is a real challenge.”

A week after the Leinster match the Edinburgh players are starting to grasp at straws of encouragement from that performance, pointing out that they more than matched the Irish in terms of possession, territory and line breaks. “It was such an opportunity,” Blair said. “Leinster did not play well and we dominated large parts of the game but because of four or five errors we effectively got blown away in the first half. It is a lesson, a microcosm of what has been happening this season, these little errors are costing us dear while we are not capitalising on the chances we are creating.

“We have talked about reaction time, how quick you are to dive on a bouncing ball, how quick you are to react to turnover ball, these are the things where less than half a second can make a difference, people can travel five or six metres in that time and we need to sharpen up on that. Those little half-seconds are the things that are costing us games.”

Castres are something of a League of Nations side with three All Blacks among the six different countries represented in the starting XV, with two more nationalities on the bench. As always with French clubs, home performance matters and while their fans may accept defeat to the likes of Toulouse, they will not accept defeat to Edinburgh. Blair expects the atmosphere to be intimidating.

The match is a landmark game for two Scots with Chris Paterson playing his 50th Heineken Cup match and Phil Godman is 100th for the club. Passing the century makes Godman one of the senior players in the squad and he acknowledges that with that comes extra responsibility to lift the side out of its slump.

“But then, as a stand-off, I'm pretty used to having a commanding role,” he said. “Every game is a big game, but this is the biggest I have played in the three or four years I have been here - for our Heineken Cup campaign and for our season in general. we know that if we play to the best of our ability we'll win. Last week we let ourselves down badly, but if we had played to the best of our ability we would have won - and probably quite comfortably. So we need to put it right this weekend.”

Castres: T Bouquie; L Mazars, S Kefu, P Christophers, R Carballo; K McIntyre, K Senio; C Hoeft, R Terrain, L Ducalcon, K Kulemin, L Nallet (capt), S Malonga, R Capo Ortega, D Nell. Replacements: A Giorgadze, Y Forrester, I Tekori, L Tomiki, S Tillous Borde, R Teulet, A Lagardere.

Edinburgh: C Paterson; M Robertson, B Cairns, N De Luca, S Webster; P Godman, M Blair (capt); A Jacobsen, R Ford, G Cross, C Hamilton, J Hamilton, S Newlands, A MacDonald, A Hogg. Replacements: A Kelly, G Kerr, B Gissing, S Cross, G Laidlaw, D Blair, J Houston.

Referee: A Small (England).