Allan Massie: By 8pm it's likely to be over for Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors - anything else would be a surprise

By eight o’clock this Saturday evening this long rugby season will probably have come to an end for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Anything else would be a surprise. The feeling in both camps is, I trust, somewhat different, but you have to be a starry-eyed optimist to expect either Glasgow to beat Leinster in Dublin or Edinburgh to win against the Stormers in Cape Town. There are two things we have learned. Leinster regularly outplay the Scottish clubs and the South African provinces are likely to overpower them, in southern hemisphere matches anyway.

In Marseille last week, La Rochelle showed that Leinster are not unbeatable, and Glasgow may take heart from the memory of having at least given the new European champions some difficulty in the earlier stage of the Heineken. Yet there is no way in which Glasgow can dominate Leinster up front as La Rochelle eventually did. Nor is there any reason to suppose that they can play with the remarkable control and self-discipline which enabled La Rochelle to score the two late tries which secured their victory. Moreover, Leinster, at home to a Scottish club, are unlikely to opt for kicking short-range penalty goals rather than putting the ball in the corner and going for a try. It was respect for La Rochelle that persuaded Johnny Sexton to take the points, and indeed this decision seemed wise till the last few minutes of the match.

Sexton isn’t playing today. He got a knock last weekend, but I guess that Leinster’s confidence is so high that he might anyway have been saved in anticipation of the expected semi-final. However Jamison Gibson-Park is at scrum-half and his ability to deliver swift ball to the players outside him has been one of the keys to Leinster’s success. As for Glasgow