Young convinced Edinburgh can still claim 1872 Cup despite below- par display

EDINBURGH lock Glen Young is convinced his team can turn the tables on Glasgow in Friday’s second 1872 Cup match after losing the first game 16- 10 at Scotstoun three days ago, writes Stuart Bathgate.

The capital club were second best in most aspects of the contest, especially in a lacklustre first half which ended with them 10- 0 adrift. But a late Jaco van der Walt penalty secured a losing bonus point in a fixture which doubled up as a league match, and kept them within touching distance of aggregate victory in the Cup double- header. “We have confidence we can turn it around,” Young said.

“We have confidence playing at home, just like Glasgow do when they’re at Scotstoun.

“These games have an edge to them. It’s not like playing any other team. Glasgow will be gunning for it coming to our place, but we’ll be up for it.

“It’s small margins, to be honest,” the forward continued when asked what might make the difference at BT Murrayfield. “There were a couple of small errors at the set- piece which we need to fix. We also need to be better at the breakdown, because we gave away too many cheap penalties and Glasgow punished us for that.

“There are a lot of areas we need to improve for next week, but they are within our control. We’ll be gunning for it going back to Murrayfield next week.”

After competing so well in their Champions Cup games against Saracens and Castres, Edinburgh were some way below their best against their rivals, and had only scored through a Connor Boyle try and Emiliano Boffelli conversion before Van der Walt’s late threepointer. Even so, on another night they might well have won, given Boffelli missed two penalties and a couple of other try- scoring chances were not taken.

“We pride ourselves on our physicality,” Young, right, added. “We knew the first half wasn’t good enough. The second half was a bit better after we addressed it at half- time. We just gave Glasgow too many chances in the first half. Any time we got into their 22, we just weren’t clinical enough in terms of coming away with points.

“We only came away with one try at the end of the night when we definitely had opportunities to score a few more than that. tha In big matches like this, that means winning or losing the game.”