Edinburgh boss Sean Everitt admits the pressure is on as his side prepare for the second leg of the 1872 Cup against Glasgow Warriors at Scottish Gas Murrayfield on Saturday.

The capital side were well beaten in the first leg at Hampden, and were staring down the barrel of a heavy defeat when they trailed 33-0 with 15 minutes to go, before two late Boan Venter tries restored some credibility to the scoreline.

And Everitt, whose side go into the second leg outside the play-off places and in ninth in the URC table, acknowledged the pressure is on.

He said: “Our job is under pressure every weekend, to be quite honest with you.

“When a team puts in a performance like that there’s questions that you ask yourself as well. But then you’ve got to be real – you’ve got to go and look at the rugby that we played, and the discipline.

“And I think you don’t have to look further than the discipline to understand why it didn’t go our way and why we didn’t have opportunities. In the second half we gave away three penalties as opposed to 10 in the first half. We were leading the second-half score 14-12.

“How do we deal with those discipline issues? We’ve got to confront those and make sure there are obviously consequences for that.

“We’ve got protocols within our group. I’m not going to share that with you. The leaders take care of the guys that do misdemeanours on and off the field, so they’ll be in control of that.

“But at the end of the day, yeah, it is disappointing to watch a team go 21-0 up at half-time. And then to come out when you’ve had a chat and concede another try as quickly as we did – it was three minutes into the second half.”

But Everitt insisted the pressure was nothing different, despite holding talks with Scottish Rugby’s new performance director David Nucifora.

He added: “I’ve been coaching long enough to know that we need results to keep our jobs. I feel no different than I did last week.”

The South African expanded further on the nature of the discussions with Australian Nucifora.

“We’ve had long talks about structures within Edinburgh Rugby and I think his focus at this stage is on the pathway system and how to rectify that,” Everitt continued.

“We’ve had regular discussions with regards to our squad and where we’re going with our squad and it’s all positive.

“It’s been good to have someone in that role that you can chat to and rub shoulders with and rub ideas off.”

Everitt also lamented his side’s lack of “intent” in their tepid performance at Hampden, with Edinburgh all-too-often coughing up possession without making any inroads into the Warriors’ defence.

He reflected: “We didn’t win the scrap battle, we lost the aerial battle, I think they got the better of us at the breakdown as well, especially in the first half.

“I suppose if you want to sum it up in one word, it’s putting in more intent in our performance. We spoke about our form away from home and there hasn’t been an improvement in that department.

“We know that we’re a good counter-attacking team. We didn’t use that to good effect until Duhan got the ball in the second half. That was disappointing for us.

“We need to stick to task and also be on it defensively for the full 80 minutes if we want to claw our way back into that 19-point difference.”

If Edinburgh are to claw back that 19-point margin – a mountainous task for Everitt’s hot and cold side against the defending URC champions – they are likely to be without Magnus Bradbury, who was forced off at Hampden with a head injury.

Ben Vellacott, who was originally named on the bench but pulled out on the day of the game, has suffered a recurrence of his ankle problem and won’t feature, and neither will prop Paul Hill, who hasn’t overcome his calf problem.

Bradbury’s injury could re-open the door for Hamish Watson to return when Everitt confirms his team on Friday afternoon, though the head coach claimed the British and Irish Lion had been left out for purely selection reasons in recent weeks.

“Hamish has been in contention for selection all along,” Everitt added.