DANCING DARCY

SCOTLAND wing Darcy Graham warmed up for the Six Nations by running riot for Edinburgh.

He became the first player to register four tries in a game for the club as he powered his side into the quarter-finals of the Heineken Challenge Cup.

It was remarkable stuff from the flyer. Only one of his scores was a simple run-in and Richard Cockerill, the head coach, was delighted at everything he had seen.

‘He’s not unique, but he is unique in Scotland because he goes looking for the ball — he just loves playing. He doesn’t overthink stuff. He’s got a huge talent that he was born with, and he’s very, very good at it,’ said Cockerill.

‘He’s little, tough and quick. He’s got great feet. And he just wants to play. He loves playing in this stadium for this team, and he was outstanding.

‘He’s still a young fellow. We don’t want to put too much pressure on him but put him in the back three with Stuart Hogg, and whoever else and that’s some serious threat.’

Graham’s sparkling feet brought Edinburgh the vital bonus-point win that makes them the best of the pool second-place finishers. Their reward is a trip back to Bordeaux but Cockerill was relaxed about the prospect of going back to the ground they lost at last week.

‘We know what it looks like and feels like,’ he said. We know how good we’re going to have to be and how good they are, so that is what it is.

‘Wherever we were going to go was going to be difficult, because those four sides that qualify for home quarters are all good. We have done our job and we know if we can get everybody fit and healthy on the field we can test any team.’

Edinburgh had gone into the game in the luxurious position of knowing any win against the pool whipping boys would see them into the quarter-finals and they went after the points from the start, almost scoring in the opening minute.

In the end, the pressure ended in a penalty for Jaco van der Walt, who had sparked the attack, but three points seemed a poor reward for such a promising piece of play — an omen for the next 25 minutes when Edinburgh did most of the attacking but could not find holes in the well-organised French defence.

The visitors might have levelled things but Raphael Lagarde, their fly-half, missed from just outside the 22 before Edinburgh eventually found their scoring touch.

It was a set-play off a lineout maul that produced the goods with George Taylor, centre, cutting an angle across the defence to slice it open, finding Graham on his shoulder to cruise over for the opening try of the game just short of the half-hour mark.

That was his only simple run-in; the second demanded a lot more hard work after getting the ball on halfway with nothing much on and the defence set ready.

What Agen could not counter was Graham’s magic feet — a quick sidestep took him through a gap only he could see, a second step took him outside the remaining cover and his speed did the rest.

As an example of rugby thrills, it was hard to beat but he did his best as he completed a 13-minute hat-trick — the third fastest by an Edinburgh player behind Tim Visser and Sam Hidalgo-Clyne — a couple of minutes later. He latched onto a huge cut-out pass with enough room to race round the last defender and show a clean pair of heels to the rest of the Agen cover.

In a blink of an eye, Edinburgh had gone from struggling to impose themselves to soaring clear of their opponents, all thanks to Graham and his dancing feet.

Away from home and with a relegation battle to return to in France, Agen might have been forgiven for throwing in the towel. But when the teams returned for the second half, it was back to the stalemate of the opening period with Edinburgh dominating but unable to find the killer break — until Graham got involved again.

This time, it was off a set move from a lineout maul as he popped up in midfield to take another offload from Taylor, wrongfoot the defence and again sprint clear of the flat-footed cover.

That was the bonus point and time to relax, but there was still time for Duhan van der Merwe to complete the try scoring — by then, the important work had already been done and it was only a case of adding a gloss to the winning margin.