Du Preez believes cup upset could turn whole season
IF EDINBURGH get a result against La Rochelle on Friday in the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals, it could be the most remarkable turnaround by a Scottish side since the national team defeated Wales 14-8 at Murrayfield in 1955 after 17 defeats in a row.
The capital outfit are in the midst of a shocking league slump which has seen them lose nine of their last ten games in the Guinness PRO12, leaving them stranded ninth in the table and 16 points adrift of eighth-placed Cardiff Blues.
It is true that their form in the Challenge Cup has been much better, with five victories in six pool matches – including home and away successes over Harlequins and a home win over Stade Français – propelling them into this weekend’s clash against the current leaders of the French Top 14.
However, the hapless nature of their most-recent league losses suggests that any residual traces of self-belief which the team has been able to call upon during their European adventures this season might have finally run dry.
Scarlets rattled four tries past them in the first half hour on a miserable night for the capital outfit in West Wales last Friday, and Edinburgh looked so out of sorts in both defence and attack that it was painful to watch.
There is nothing really positive you can say about that performance, and No.8 Cornell du Preez didn’t even try, although he did insist that all hope is not lost in terms of the team’s ability to upset La Rochelle on Friday night.
“I think as a whole group we find it frustrating because we know we’ve got players to do well but we just haven’t been functioning as we should,” he said.
“I think it has a lot to do with individual errors – we only have ourselves to blame for things like losing the ball before we have gone through just a couple of phases – and I think that has been costing us most. If we can get that sorted out, just think about ourselves and not the opposition so much, we could do well.”
Edinburgh have a new head coach in Richard Cockerill arriving in the summer, who will hope to reinvigorate the ailing side, but until then they have no choice other than to keep battling.
While there is no respite, Du Preez believes that a change can be as good as a break this weekend.
“There’s a different feeling [this week] because it’s something fresh, and also because it is a quarter-final. We’ve played against some good sides in this competition and done very well. I don’t know if it is a mind-shift thing, but this could kick-start us to maybe have a good end to the PRO12 season,” he reasoned.
Du Preez knows a bit himself about dramatic turnarounds in fortune. The South African-born breakaway played the majority of his rugby during the first half of this season for Heriot’s in the semi-professional BT Premiership and had not started a match for Edinburgh, before suddenly finding himself catapulted into the Scotland set-up for their Autumn Test series match against Argentina last November (he qualifies on residency grounds).
He did not make the match-day squad for that game or the following match against Georgia, but did end up making his debut off the bench against England last month.
“I was struggling for fitness at the start of the season [after ankle surgery] and we had a lot of loose forwards who were performing well, so I preferred going to Heriot’s to get a bit of game time instead of just running around on the back pitches here. It was better to play rugby. You always learn from everything you go through. I was delighted to be capped and now I am delighted to be back playing for Edinburgh, too,” reflected the 26-year-old.
“I certainly learned a lot going into the Scotland camp and being in that environment.”
And as for Edinburgh’s masterplan for upsetting the applecart against La Rochelle? It will require a great deal more accuracy and composure than they have been able to muster in recent weeks.
“I think it will be important for us to get the ball moving a bit. We don’t have to take them on physically that much – they are big boys so we need to play around them instead of through them,” mused Du Preez.
“We’ll try and get them moving, especially playing out here [on the fast hybrid pitch at Murrayfield]. If we focus on our own game, then we’ll go well.”