Edinburgh in need of cheer
WHEN Edinburgh finished ninth in the PRO12 last season, it was rightly regarded as a disappointment. Now, with three games still to play and after a dire run of results, that position is the height of their ambition.
That ninth place followed two years in which Edinburgh came eighth, and brought a halt to a brief period of modest improvement. In 2012 they were 11th, in 2013 10th, and at least by contrast their more recent campaigns have seen them threaten, albeit briefly, to break into the top half of the table.
Not so this time. Friday night’s 22-19 defeat at Myreside by Connacht was their seventh straight loss in the league and their eighth in all competitions following their quarter-final Challenge Cup defeat by La Rochelle a week earlier. It was another frustrating display for players and fans, as the team failed to get any points on the board until the final quarter, leaving it far too late to mount a recovery.
“In the first half we gave away too many turnovers and penalties, and you’re just not going to win games with that many errors,” Ben Toolis said. “It sums up the season, really: bad first half then come back in the second half to put up a good fight. Sometimes we might get there, but most of the time we lose by a few points.
“We’ve got young boys and they’re having a lot of experience as well. We were hoping this season was going to go a lot better than it has, but we’ll learn from it. We’ve got three games left and hopefully we’ll finish with three wins.
“We like to think we get stronger from each game. We do, but maybe not quick enough. Hopefully we’ll stay together, keep our heads high, and I’m sure we’ll get better.”
Whether Edinburgh do stay together as a team will be decided in large part by Richard Cockerill, who will take over as head coach for the start of next season. The promise of some of those young, inexperienced players mentioned by Toolis is clear, but it is being counterbalanced at present by a dreadful lack of self-confidence. To bring in a squad of battle-hardened outsiders would be counter-productive, but at the same time there are some positions that are in dire need of reinforcement.
Amidst all the gloom, however, there are a few bright spots, chief among them being the continuing excellent form of Hamish Watson. To remain immune when general demoralisation sets in at your club is one of the hardest things to do in sport, but the openside flanker has done exactly that, getting better and better as a powerful attacker. If a few more members of the team emulate Watson’s combative and committed attitude in those remaining three games, Cockerill might just be persuaded that he has some decent material with which to work.