DARCY LEFT US ALL FOR DUST
Kinghorn hails fellow speedster Graham after he steals the show for Edinburgh
IT’S showtime,’ Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill bellowed down his microphone to his assistants on the Murrayfield touchline.‘Get it wide to Darcy and Duhan.’
With 13 minutes left and the hosts trailing Glasgow 19-17, this was his way of telling everyone they had to throw caution to the wind.
With an imposing figure like Cockerill calling the shots at the top of his voice — to the extent he could be heard halfway down the main stand — it was a case of he who must be obeyed.
His orders turned a potential defeat into victory for the capital side after they had lost 20-16 to Warriors at Scotstoun the previous week. A tiring Glasgow side ended up chasing their own shadows in this encounter. They had Jonny Gray sin-binned for illegally pulling down a maul that led to a penalty try to Edinburgh.
And when man-of-the-match Darcy Graham got the ball from Mark Bennett a full 50 metres out with two minutes left, there was no stopping him. Even his own full-back Blair Kinghorn couldn’t keep pace. The win was secured.
‘Darcy is a great player, he is electric and I couldn’t keep up,’ said Kinghorn. ‘He is so fast. He ran in from 50 metres out and still burned two or three players.’
Even Cockerill couldn’t hide his admiration over the display of his winger, who also scored a try in the first half after a superb one-handed offload from Bill Mata.
First, though, the head coach explained his ‘showtime’ order.
‘I felt: “Sod it, let’s strap a pair on and go for it”,’ smiled the Englishman. ‘Darcy is a quality player and he showed it with his two tries. We wanted him involved more late on.
‘Look, I’m still a pragmatist. I still want us to make good decisions and kick it when we need to kick it. But when it’s on, it’s on and we need to play. We showed that with the last try from Darcy.
‘It’s on, we get a turnover, quality catch pass, and when we’ve got quality on our edges like we have with Darcy, he scores. We had to try to get the ball out there to him and roll the dice — and it worked.’
Graham’s two tries — added to one from Henry Pyrgos and the penalty score that saw Gray sent packing — gave the home side a fully deserved triumph.
They were better all over the park, with some unexpected heroes in their ranks.
Like Matt Scott. Up until he came on for the capital side, Glasgow centre Huw Jones had looked back to his best, scoring a great try after running a superb line.
He struggled after Scott’s introduction, however. As an impact substitute for George Taylor, the Edinburgh man was magnificent. Only some clever defending from Ruaridh Jackson stopped him touching the bottom of the post for a try that his play late in the game deserved.
Glasgow are now in a real fight to make the end-of-season play-offs after their fifth defeat in nine league games. They are fourth in Conference A of the Pro14, with only the top three making the end-of-season shootout.
‘I haven’t done the maths but we have lost five now, which puts us under a bit of heat,’ said Warriors head coach Dave Rennie.
‘We still have to play Ulster a couple of times and Cheetahs and Leinster, so we have a chance to claw back some points there.
‘We have Treviso away next and Dragons at home beyond that, so we have boxed ourselves into a bit of a corner.
‘I still think you can lose seven or eight games and still make the play-offs, but I don’t want to try that theory out.’ Rennie remains confident of securing the return of Leone Nakarawa until the end of the season and that will undoubtedly make a difference at a time when his team need all the help they can get. They are continuing to struggle to find a winning formula. To be fair, they did little wrong when Edinburgh went ahead after 19 minutes. Duhan van der Merwe made the hard yards into the opposition half before the ball was recycled to Mata. In a moment of genius more akin to a basketball court, the Fijian showed great hands to offload to Graham. Off went the winger on the outside and, after a clever dummy on Ratu Tagive, he was over the line. Simon Hickey added the extras. Glasgow pulled level six minutes later after a great run and finish by Jones, who got on the end of a clever pass from Jackson. Adam Hastings put over the conversion.