“We have a point to prove,” he says. “You cannot just have Scottish teams finishing bottom all the time.” Yet that is where they were last time out, propping up their Welsh and Irish counterparts as the lack of strength in depth was reflected in the final league standings. Out of the darkness of the winter months that correlated with the Six Nations tournament and an exodus of experience, comes the light of the lessons learned by those left behind.
As Joiner is keen to point out, clubs like Edinburgh should start to claim some of the rewards for the pain they suffered last season. “We only had our top team for about eight or nine matches if you think about it,” he says. “When we had all the players out, we did pretty well apart from that time during the Six Nations when I think we had 11 in the squad, Simon Cross as a travelling reserve and Todd Blackadder as coach — losing then was not surprising. The benefit was that we proved that the young guys were starting to understand the way that we want to play and started to play that way.”
Those same young guys who were exposed last spring to top-level league rugby, have had a summer to digest the lessons, put in the training and show that they can match their equivalents in Ireland and Wales.
What Edinburgh did achieve last season was that the team proved to itself that it has the capacity to flourish at the top level. A run to the quarter finals of the Heineken Cup, and an appearance in the Celtic Cup final proved that, on their day, Edinburgh are fiercely competitive. “You put all the hard work in, and it is possible that if things do not start to go your way, you start to question yourself. When things do go your way, you get a bit of luck and the hard work starts to pay off, then you get on that roll which is so important,” says Joiner.
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Across at Glasgow and down at the Borders, they still have to make that breakthrough. Glasgow, who had the core of a decent team last season, have been filling in the gaps but still need to cut out that maddening inconsistency. What the Borders will achieve with an almost completely rebuilt squad is anybody’s guess but it cannot be worse than last season when they looked like the East Stirling of the rugby world.
In common with Glasgow and the Borders, Edinburgh have struggled in their close-season preparations with injury. Tom Philip and Simon Taylor are on the long-term injury list and Edinburgh also look to be starting the season without the likes of Scott Murray, Brendan Laney and Chris Paterson.
Fortunately, common sense has prevailed and a number of the international players who had been pulled out of pre-season action for a strength and conditioning programme will be released back to their clubs in time. England, Wales and Ireland are all holding back their summer tourists, but unlike Scotland, have enough players to get away with it.
Indeed, after four years in the wilderness, Joiner himself was called into a Scotland training squad last May, though he has been around long enough to dismiss any idea that one training camp puts him on the verge of an international recall and, as he expected, he missed the summer tour. At 30, he admits he thought about retiring at the end of last season but accepted a two-year deal while he studies for financial qualifications that should ensure there is no gap between the end of his rugby career and the start of his next.
Until then, he is having a ball. “I am loving it,” he says. “I felt that another year or two would be ideal for me. As long as you are enjoying it, that is the important thing, so I decided to carry on. If I was not 100% enjoying it and 100% committed I would not be here in the thick of things.”
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Part of that fun is from the fluid style his club play. “It’s a style that suits us, we don’t have the physical power to batter our way over the advantage line, so we put a lot of width on the ball to create space that way. We are not physically that big so we had to do things differently. All the players had been doing that for so long, so it took us a long time to get it right but now it is starting to bear fruit.”
The bar has been raised. The public, the ultimate paymasters, have seen what Edinburgh can achieve and expect them to add league status to last season’s cup exploits. Now for the gain.