Edinburgh 78 - 0 Krasny Yar: Record win for capital side

Edinburgh's Duhan van der Merwe runs through to score his late try. Picture: Paul Devlin/SNS

On this evidence, how the painfully outclassed Siberians managed to beat cup holders Stade Francais in the opening round and run them close in Paris last weekend must go down as two of the most inexplicable results in recent rugby history.

Tries from Duhan van der Merwe (2), Chris Dean, Lewis Carmichael, Jamie Ritchie, Blair Kinghorn, Sean Kennedy, Neil Cochrane, Darcy Graham, Damien Hoyland, Junior Rasolea and Cameron Fenton ensured that Edinburgh claimed their fourth straight bonus-point win in the tournament so far and, barring the most unlikely sequence of results, they are effectively now two matches away from repeating their 2015 feat of reaching the final, which this season takes place in Bilbao in May.

Edinburgh will complete their pool programme with home and away games against Stade Francais next month.

The official attendance, which counts season ticket holders, was put at 2,773, but it looked well below that. A far bigger crowd will be in attendance at the national stadium next Saturday for the first of the 1872 Cup double-header against Glasgow and the hope will now be that Edinburgh can secure a home tie in the last eight come the new year and pack out Myreside.

There was a change to the team Edinburgh had announced on Thursday, with recent South African signing Jaco van der Walt, who had been the only fit specialist No 10 available to Cockerill, ruled out yesterday morning with a bug. He was replaced by Blair Kinghorn, who was promoted from the bench to take up his schoolboy position of stand-off, with Sam Hidalgo-Clyne filling the vacant spot among the replacements.

Edinburgh were 35-0 up within 20 minutes in what was an embarrassingly one-sided contest, which was not helped by the sin-binning of visiting openside Victor Arhip. Wing Van der Merwe crossed within the first minute of his home debut and the procession continued from there with scores from Dean, Carmichael, Ritchie and Kinghorn, who converted all five of the tries.

The second quarter saw two further touchdowns as Kennedy and Cochrane ghosted through the paper-thin Siberian defence, with Kinghorn losing his perfect kicking record when he pulled his attempted conversion of the latter’s score wide.

The festive turkey shoot continued after the break as Graham pounced on a kick through down the right touchline, though Kinghorn missed the testing conversion from out wide,

It was Kinghorn’s last contribution of the night as he was replaced by international scrum-half Hidalgo-Clyne, who slotted in at stand-off.

The game fell into an inevitable lull as, to their credit, the Russians continued to battle gamely but Edinburgh broke through again just before the hour mark when Hoyland was first to Hidalgo-Clyne’s teasing kick to touch down in the right corner but the sub stand-off couldn’t add the conversion to his assist.

Rasolea became the tenth separate try scorer on the night as he burst through from close range and Hidalgo-Clyne’s conversion took the score to 64-0 and surpassed the club’s previous biggest winning  margin when they beat the same side 74-13 in Moscow three months ago.

Cameron Fenton’s try and another Hidalgo-Clyne conversion had the scoreboard ticking over 70 points soon after.

The record points total followed as Van der Merwe cruised over for his second of the evening and Hidalgo-Clyne knocked over the extras to put the seal on an emphatic and professional dismantling of severely limited opponents.

Edinburgh won’t have an easier game all season and next weekend’s visit of Glasgow Warriors will be a completely different kettle of fish but an eighth win out of the last nine matches, and a remarkable 175 points plundered in December alone after putting on 48 against Southern Kings at the start of the month and 50 against London Irish, has given Cockerill’s men a spring in their step which suggests a fascinating inter-city showdown lies in store.