Edinburgh may not have been watched in the flesh by too many South Africans, but the team from the Scottish capital has a rich tradition and 150 years of history behind it.
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Formed in 1872, meaning 150 years ago, to play as Edinburgh District against Glasgow District, which was the beginning of the famous 1872 Cup that is still contested between them and Glasgow Warriors within the framework of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship on a home and away basis, Edinburgh are one of two Scottish professional teams.
They were formerly Edinburgh Reivers and Edinburgh Gunners, and their identity was reformed from the district team with the arrival of professionalism in 1996 when they competed in the Heineken Cup.
Their best performance in Europe’s premier competition was in the 2011–12 season, when the club reached the semifinal but lost out narrowly to Ulster, 22–19. The quarterfinal tie against Toulouse attracted a club-record crowd of over 38 000 spectators to Murrayfield.
Ironically, it was the self-same Ulster who ended Edinburgh’s most recent run of success. That came in the 2019-20 Pro14 season under the coaching of Richard Cockerill, with Edinburgh hosting a semifinal for the first time and going into their clash with Ulster as strong favourites.
And they lived up to that tag for much of the game and looked to be heading for victory before they wilted under late pressure and a bizarre sequence of events led to them being beaten by a penalty after the hooter.
Edinburgh haven’t been the same since then, and until this season in the URC, where at one stage they were second on the overall log, they haven’t quite challenged to the same extent again.
A difficult 2020-21 season, where perhaps everything was a bit anti-climactic after they’d come so close to success the year before, culminated in Edinburgh parting ways with Cockerill by mutual consent. That paved the way for former Scotland halfback Mike Blair, the current coach, to take over, and the initial stages of his tenure have met with relative success.
Edinburgh have had several South Africans play for them, including Duhan van der Merwe, who started his career with Scotland and won his place on the British and Irish Lions tour while playing for them. Then, of course, there are other Scottish internationals from these parts such as Pierre Schoeman, WP Nel and Jaco van der Walt.
Former Springbok coach Alan Solomons coached Edinburgh between 2013 and 2016. Before that, Edinburgh were coached by former England head coach Andy Robinson.
They come to South Africa having slipped from second to fifth position on the URC log in the space of a few weeks and desperate to get back onto the winning trail again after being comprehensively outplayed by their arch-rivals from Glasgow in last weekend’s 1872 derby.
However, they have a clutch of Scotland internationals back in action after the completion of the Six Nations, including Schoeman and the talented Blair Kinghorn.