Ritchie ready for shoot-out with Warriors
JAMIE RITCHIE claims Edinburgh will head into Glasgow Warriors’ backyard ‘all guns blazing’ and ready to serve up some more christmas misery to their arch rivals.
twelve months ago, Richard cockerill’s team inflicted a double dose of festive pain on Glasgow, and are in the mood for a repeat when they visit Scotstoun on Saturday and then play hosts for the return at Murrayfield seven days later.
Edinburgh will enter those fiercelycontested affairs buoyed by sparkling performances in Europe culminating in a physically draining but mentally uplifting 9-7 victory at Wasps, where the team’s resilience, desire and fortitude ensured they successfully crawled over the finishing line.
Jaco van der Walt’s late match-winning penalty sealed victory over the English Premiership side and ensured perfect preparation for the battles with Warriors, who went from the highs of winning in France to losing at home to La Rochelle.
Flanker Ritchie, however, admits that while Edinburgh will line up for the clash with the momentum from their challenge cup exploits and also superior domestic results, it will count for little in the latest Guinness Pro14 confrontation.
he said: ‘they are always good games, and we certainly don’t need any more motivation than merely seeing Glasgow on the other side of the teamsheet.
‘We’ve had some indifferent performances against them. Obviously we didn’t do too well there at the end of last season but I’d prefer to remember the two good results we got over them last christmas. hopefully, we can repeat that this year.
‘I don’t think you can read much into how the two sides have started because form goes out the window when we meet. We know each other so well, it really is about who turns up on the day. For us, it is about preparing the best we can and be ready for what is always a massive challenge.
‘We have momentum from both our domestic and European results but Glasgow will be chomping at the bit to try and give us a beating. they are coming off the back of playing in the top tier in Europe where they have had tough games which should set them up to play us.
‘they had mixed results against La Rochelle and have struggled in the league but I still feel they are not in bad form and are not a bad team. So we have to make sure we go in all guns blazing.’
Ritchie and his team-mates certainly needed to show tremendous fighting spirit and physical defiance at the Ricoh Arena in a game which offered little exciting, flowing rugby but provided plenty of power, physicality and tested the players’ fitness and stamina to the limit.
Edinburgh demonstrated their mental toughness by overturning a 7-3 deficit to grind out a win, with Van der Walt coming off the bench 18 minutes from time to kick two penalties. his second a minute from time secured the win after his ‘boom or bust’ kick 50 metres up to the Wasps 22 set up the opportunity to win the game.
It was a third challenge cup win in four games and strong belief is building as they move into the latter stages of the competition and try and build on a fine Pro14 start of five wins from seven games.
Ritchie added: ‘We backed ourselves to be fitter than Wasps. they have been a successful club in Europe in the past with a lot of history, so to beat them here gives us a lot of confidence.
‘We made an awful lot of mistakes but still did enough to win. It was by no means a complete performance but we know we can improve a lot on various things that happened out there. We also made nine changes and were still able to get the job done which just shows you the real strength in depth we have at the club.’
Wing Jamie Farndale felt it was not the nature of the win that mattered but the character shown by the team and insisted: ‘It was certainly not the prettiest game we’ve played. In fact, it would have been pretty ugly to watch.
‘As a back, I’d have liked to play a bit more and have the chance to run with the ball, but it comes down to the grit and determination, and we base our game on that, plus the hard work with the fancy stuff coming on top, if possible.
‘As long as those ingredients are there, you can grind out wins like this. And we will need that in abundance against Glasgow. We won’t need any invitation to get up for those games... it will be a given!’