Edinburgh must end an unbeaten Pro14 run that dates back to November in Treviso today if they are to maintain a realistic chance of hosting a semi-final.

“Benetton are as good as anybody else in the competition,” head coach Richard Cockerill acknowledged. “They’re one of the form teams, so no taking that away from them, but they’re all critical, the five games. We lose tomorrow and we’re going to drop seven, potentially eight points behind Treviso. It’s a tough run-in, but we’ve just got to keep plugging away.”

After the disappointment of failing to defend a 17 point lead against Cardiff last week, his squad is bolstered by the return from international duty of Ben Toolis, Henry Pyrgos and Chris Dean, while Scotland stalwarts Hamish Watson and WP Nel both return from injury, albeit Fijian back-row Bill Mata is the latest to succumb to injury.

“There’s plenty of pinch points around injuries and selection with the national team and that obviously impacts down into our group and at this point we haven’t got a deep enough squad to be losing all those guys,but we’ve got a good group of lads that are going to work very hard tomorrow and we’re going to go and try and win a game, as simple as that. We have every intention of doing that and that will be our mindset,” said Cockerill.

Edinburgh’s next match is a visit from runaway Conference leaders Leinster next, followed by meetings with play-off rivals Scarlets and Ulster, ahead of a visit to Glasgow, but Cockerill seems increasingly confident that last year’s Scotland captain John Barclay will finally be available to help negotiate those matches.