NO HOME COMFORTS AFTER THE SCARLETS MISS OUT
ALARGELY Scarlets secondstring failed miserably in its bid to secure a home qualifier in the Guinness PRO14 title play-offs after conceding eight tries at Murrayfield.
Edinburgh’s field day in a sunny Scottish capital brought them a bonus point and closed the gap on Wayne Pivac’s team in Conference B to a point.
That means defeat for the secondplaced Scarlets against the Dragons on Judgement Day at the Principality Stadium later this month and Edinburgh accounting for Conference A top guns Glasgow Warriors, who have already booked an automatic home semi-final, would result in the west Wales region going on the road in the play-offs.
Pivac had rested almost his entire first team for the trip north ahead of next Saturday’s massive European Champions Cup semi-final clash with Leinster in Dublin.
And a makeshift Scarlets’ line-up was hit for four tries in 24 minutes by an Edinburgh team playing with speed, vision and real purpose.
Full-back Blair Kinghorn, wing Duhan van der Merwe, scrum-half Sam Hidalgo-Clyne and flanker Magnus Bradbury all crossed the whitewash.
Hidalgo-Clyne was successful with three conversions and they led 26-0 after what had been a rout.
Scarlets match-day skipper Steff Evans said: “First 20 minutes we didn’t turn up. We were slow getting to every contact.”
Scarlets managed to regroup, find their feet and hit back with tries from former England wing Tom Varndell and outside-half Dan Jones, who converted both.
“We came alive for 15 minutes but it was disappointing,” went on Hughes.
“You have just jot to try and get control of things, get control of possession and try and rebuild the game from there.
“But I think that’s the most difficult part of rugby. You don’t expect to come to Edinburgh, the team they are and start as slowly as we did.”
Scarlets trailed 26-14 at the interval and the opening score in the second half was always going to be crucial.
It was Edinburgh who got it with the outstanding Hidalgo-Clyne again doing the damage, sniping the blindside following a ruck.
He looked up, saw space and put in a perfectly-weighted left-footed grubber for van der Merwe to chase and scoop up the ball for his second touchdown.
That made it 33-14 in their favour with Crosby, Bennett and Fowles later finishing off a clinical display.
Centre Hughes doesn’t believe it will dampen morale and belief ahead of Scarlets’ seismic European clash with Leinster at the Aviva Stadium.
“You can look at it two ways. It’s either damaging mentally or you learn from it and you are better next week. I think that’s the approach we are going to take,” he said.
“It’s going to be massive for the region. I think the whole community is behind the team and we will have a
great weekend.”
But Hughes warned: “We have got a lot of stuff to iron out after this.”
Edinburgh supremo Richard Cockerill, the former England hooker and ex-Leicester Tigers coach, had mixed feelings about his side’s performance.
“It was a game we needed to win. In the context of it, we aren’t getting too excited because the Scarlets brought a mixed team,” he said.
In the end, we were grateful to win it because they had got themselves back into it and it started to look a bit uncomfortable for us.
“Considering the players they had missing, they stayed in the game far too long for my liking.”