Seeing him is easy. Stopping him? That is another Mata...
IN terms of a target, he is hard to miss. Unfortunately for Newcastle Falcons, Viliame Mata is even harder to stop.
The powerful Edinburgh No 8 has been highlighted by Dean Richards as the danger man after his side suffered at the large hands of the Fijian in their Heineken Champions Cup loss at Murrayfield last week.
His wrecking ball of a performance punched holes in the Newcastle defence for others to run through and, if Falcons are to bounce back from that defeat, they will need to stop him at Kingston Park tomorrow.
‘Mata is a top player who was really on his game against us,’ said Newcastle head coach Richards, who was a world-class back-row forward for England in his day.
Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill certainly expects Mata to be targeted for some big early hits by the Newcastle players.
‘Dean would certainly know how to stop him Viliame if he was still playing,’ joked Cockerill. ‘Seriously, Vili is a unique individual and Vili brings what Vili brings. They will target him because he is a very good ball carrier and a very important player for us.
‘We also, though, have other good ball-carriers in Hamish Watson, Stuart McInally, Allan Dell and both our locks. It’s the same with (Newcastle) — Timoci Nagusa and (Mark) Wilson are good ball-carriers and Calum Green has played exceptionally well for them, so they will make it hard for us.’
Cockerill has made just two changes to the starting XV that beat Newcastle so easily at home.
Allan Dell comes in for Pierre Schoeman at loosehead prop, with Luke Hamilton replacing the injured Jamie Ritchie on the flank.
Edinburgh sit top of Pool 5 ahead of Newcastle, Montpellier and Toulon, with a win away tomorrow keeping their qualification hopes on track.
‘We’ve got everything to play for,’ said Cockerill. ‘Newcastle have made 11 changes from last week and will be a lot stronger and obviously hurting from the result last weekend. We have to keep concentrating on what we do and if we get it right we can beat them.
‘They had a lot of very good players playing against us last weekend and they will have some good players to come back into their squad this week.’
Chief among them is back-row forward John Hardie, whose Edinburgh contract was not renewed after being suspended for three months in his final season following allegations of cocaine use.
The Scotland international was not registered for last week’s game at Murrayfield but is part of a far stronger looking Newcastle side this time out.
England flanker Wilson and wingers Vereniki Goneva and Sinoti Sinoti are also among the returning stars for a Falcons team captained by fly-half Toby Flood.
‘We need to be a bit more accurate in certain areas of our game this week, which we’re looking at, and we only played about half of our play sheet last week,’ said Richards. ‘That means we still have a fair bit in reserve which Edinburgh won’t have seen in the first game at Murrayfield.
‘We’ve won six of our last nine and there’s a draw in there as well, so we’ve been going all right when you look at the wider picture. We knew the first six weeks of the season were always going to be a challenge but we’ve started to play well again and we’ve got a lot of depth.
‘The boys who took the field last weekend were undone a bit by the fact our scrum was under so much pressure, for reasons I’ve already gone into, with no specialist tighthead available.
‘You’ve got to take your hat off to Sam Lockwood and Sami Mavinga for dogging it out on that right-hand side of the scrum for us. They didn’t have to, they put their hands up and said they’d give it a go, and it was a tough day at the office for them. Credit to Edinburgh, they knew how to exploit our scrum then but Sunday will be different altogether.’
NEWCASTLE: Hammersley; Goneva, Harris, Williams, Sinoti; Flood, Takulua; Lockwood, Cooper, Davison, Green, Cavubati, Wilson, Hardie, Nagusa.
Replacements: McGuigan, Mavinga, Payne, Young, Graham, Stuart, Connon, Arscott.
EDINBURGH: Kinghorn; Graham, Johnstone, Dean, Van der Merwe; Van der Walt, Pyrgos; Dell, McInally, Nel, Toolis, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Watson, Mata.
Replacements: Cherry, Schoeman, Berghan, Hunter-Hill, Crosbie, Fowles, Hickey, Socino.