AS HE looked back on his side’s failure to score in a derby match, Duncan Hodge had greater cause for complaint than Hibs manager Neil Lennon had a few days earlier, but it is not the former Scotland play-maker’s way to vent his frustration in quite the same way.

Instead, a few days after the event, he posed a perfectly justified question in wondering why the technology that the Northern Irishman was suggesting football would once again be forced to consider introducing after what was clearly a goal for his side was not given, had not been used at Scotstoun on Saturday.

“As the referee why he didn’t go to the TMO [television match official],” he said of what might have been a try for Damien Hoyland at an early stage in the match.

Charged with priming the Edinburgh attack, Hodge offered that as part explanation for their failure to score a point in a match for the first time in three years in the second of their derby meetings with Glasgow, but he admitted that, in overall terms, there had been a difference between their finishing in that match and in the two which preceded the derbies which yielded 20 tries in two European Challenge Cup ties against London Irish and Krasny Yar.

“Maybe it is a bit of added pressure or anxiety,” he mused, before adding: “I’m probably more inclined to say it’s just one of those things that happened a couple of weeks in a row.”

What the man who was in charge of the team’s destiny this time last year, during a lengthy spell as interim head coach, will not be doing is beating himself up too much about the number of opportunities that his players spurned against Glasgow, instead preferring to focus on the fact that they created them.

“If I take it personally it affects the whole team. You tend to look at the outcome and the process rather than just the points on the board,” he noted.

“We were playing against a good defence. We were very frustrated. Next week we might get a couple of bounces of the ball and get an extra 14 points that we shouldn’t.”

Fitting in between their encounters with Glasgow and then with Stade Francais in the Challenge Cup, this weekend’s Pro14 match is, in an odd way, another back-to-back encounter, for their opponents since tournament newcomers the Southern Kings’ last match was when losing 48-21 at home to Edinburgh at the start of December.

Hodge expects them to take a similar approach, albeit Myreside on a mid-winter’s evening may be something of a shock to some of their systems.

As to Edinburgh’s situation, they still have a shortage of options in the front-row and at play-maker. However, Scotland flanker John Hardie returned to training this week, albeit his suspension from playing is not up until the middle of the month, while Hodge confirmed that international centre Mark Bennett is primed and ready to play once more.

“He’s been fit and available to play the last 10 days. Mark’s a quality player so hopefully he’ll be back in the mix,” he said. “This weekend at home we’ve got to get back on league form, then we’ve got two massive games in Europe.”