EDINBURGH did not hit the heights of previous performances, but they did enough to defeat Cardiff Blues on Friday night and stay top of Conference B.
Richard Cockerill's side edged out their Welsh visitors with centre George Taylor grabbing the only try of the game to make it ten victories from 13 league games.
“It was as bad as we've played all season, but we'll take the four points,” head coach Cockerill said. “Cardiff were hard to break down, they defended our lineout and set piece strikes really well and they tested us a little bit by controlling the field position.
“We couldn't really get a foothold in the game, but we found a way to win and that's the key part.
“We've got a lot of guys missing, we chose to rotate, and I think that was the right thing to do.
We can have a bit of a break now and enjoy a bit of downtime.”
The Blues were forced to make four late changes with Hallam Amos, Shane Lewis-Hughes, Lloyd Williams and Ben Thomas ruled out at the 11th hour.
Head coach John Mulvihill said: “We were really disappointed not to take something back to Cardiff with us because I think we played well enough to get something out of the game, we just couldn't finish it off.
“The second half was a bit different from the first but we can be incredibly proud of our boys.
We lost three players in the build up to the game and also lost our captain five minutes before kickoff, which meant we had to make four changes within 24 hours.”
Despite the disruptions in the lead up, Cardiff actually started well and took the lead through a penalty from stand-off Jason Tovey.
However, it was Edinburgh who scored the opening try when a clearance kick was charged down by Taylor and he gathered the ball and went over the line. Standoff Simon Hickey's conversion hit the upright.
Tovey and Hickey both then missed penalty chances before the latter did successfully kick one on the half hour mark to make it 8-3, with three more points from Tovey narrowing it to 8-6 at the break.
Five minutes into the second half Edinburgh brought loosehead prop Pierre Schoeman off the bench and he helped them turn the screw.
Cardiff kept fighting and it was not until the last five minutes that Edinburgh managed to seal the win with two more Hickey penalties.
