Gilchrist calls on Edinburgh men to live up to potential
GRANT GILCHRIST is confident this will be Edinburgh’s ‘statement season’ after a series of false dawns during his eight years at the club.
the 29-year-old knows from bitter experience that the capital club has lived in the shadow of Glasgow Warriors in terms of the league, with the Scotstoun outfit winning the 2015 title and reaching two more finals.
Edinburgh have never enjoyed such league success but Gilchrist believes times are changing. He is confident his team can make a big statement by beating Munster in Cork in the Pro14 tomorrow evening before going on to make the end-of-season league play-offs at the very least.
But for Edinburgh to achieve success he accepts they need to be more consistent.
‘I love the club and the direction we are going in, and I see this as our statement season,’ said the Scotland lock forward. ‘We’ve had a couple of years where we have shown a bit of growth, and now we need to deliver this year.
‘We’ve got a good squad so there might be different players used in different games, but I believe that any time an Edinburgh team takes the field in either competition — Pro14 or Challenge Cup — we are good enough to win.
‘the quality of players and the depth of the squad is there. We’ve had a couple of years under Richard Cockerill developing how we play, and I think this year we have evolved a little bit.
‘We look a way more balanced side in terms of what we have up front and across the back-line. ‘We were disappointed with the league last year. We have to be a club which consistently reaches the play-offs if we want to talk about winning the tournament. Every tournament we are in it to win it because we believe that in every game we play, we can win. But if you look at teams that have gone on to win silverware, they haven’t just got there overnight. ‘I would love to win it this year, but, really, we are looking at this stage to be consistently in the play-offs and getting used to playing in and winning big matches.’ Edinburgh currently sit third in Conference B of the Pro14 behind Scarlets and Munster and will have all their top players, apart from flanker Hamish Watson and prop W P nel, available for the match against the leaders at the Irish Independent Stadium. A hunger for at least reaching the play-offs is clear. ‘It is a double-pointer,’ said Gilchrist. ‘Munster are top dogs in our conference table at the moment, so if we can go out there and get a result then we are making a serious statement that we are contenders for the play-offs. ‘this was always going to be a huge game and we knew it was coming up in the calendar. We are under no illusions as to its importance for our section of the league. It is a chance for us to close the gap on first place. ‘We want to be in the play-offs at the end of the season and Munster are ahead of us, so this is a great opportunity for us to go out there and put ourselves in a great position. ‘We played Munster in the play-offs a couple of years ago and we all learned from that experience. We then played them again in Europe in a game which could have gone either way, so hopefully we have learned from those experiences about what it takes to win big games.’