Bradbury determined to bow out on a high
There are higher stakes than usual as Glasgow travel to face Edinburgh
AFTER eight seasons as an Edinburgh player, Magnus Bradbury is set to take part in his last 1872 Cup match on Saturday before moving on to Bristol in the summer. He has every intention of bowing out on a high.
Still only 26, the backrow forward has played his part in a sure and steady transformation of the capital club since making his debut in 2014. They were also-rans in the PRO12 back in those days, became harder to beat if also hard to watch under Richard Cockerill, and are now both more competitive and more entertaining under Mike Blair.
Not that the transformation is in any way complete. At present in the eighth and last URC play-off place going into this last match of the regular season, Edinburgh need a result against Glasgow to qualify for next season’s Champions Cup and avoid a quarter-final against champions Leinster.
An improbably high-scoring draw in which they claim a try bonus and the Warriors fail to do so would be enough for Bradbury and his team-mates to climb to seventh, in the process winning the ScottishItalian Shield and thus getting into the Champions Cup. But, with a 13-point deficit from the first leg of the 1872 Cup, they understandably want to keep it simple and win the game by a wide enough margin to reclaim the trophy on aggregate.
“The aim and the glory of it all is that we can finish the season on a real high by beating Glasgow,” Bradbury says. “That would hopefully get us a better draw in terms of the play-offs and also get us into the Champions Cup for next season. That would be perfect.
“I want to help the club finish on a real high and do something special. That would be a great way to go out. It’s been a good season for the boys and I feel like I’ve played some good rugby personally. We just want to keep that momentum going.
“The club I broke into when I first came here was probably a bottom-end-of-the-table team. That’s the fact of the matter. We had some good results in those years, such as beating Harlequins back to back in the Challenge Cup in my first breakthrough year. We had some success under Cockers. But we lacked that consistency and I feel we hit our ceiling with the way we played back then.
“But now the way we play has opened up a whole new avenue of opportunity for us. We still have that hard edge, that hard backbone instilled under Cockers. The way the club has developed it can only keep on getting better, and over the next two or three years I think we’ll see some really good results for Edinburgh.”
Like all clubs, Edinburgh have enjoyed some excellent one-off results over the years. However, it is perhaps indicative of just how much they have improved over the current campaign that Bradbury, when asked to recall the high points of his eight seasons with the team, should plump for a couple of very recent successes.
“There have been a few highs, but probably the most special one was beating Saracens away from home earlier this season,” he says. “Beating the Sharks over in South Africa as well. Those two are quite recent and stand out in the memory.”
So too, unfortunately, do Edinburgh’s most recent matches, in which they lost a vital URC match to Ulster and were then knocked out of the Challenge Cup by Wasps.
“The two lows would probably be the last two games we’ve had, to be honest. To lose at home for the first time all season against Ulster and then get knocked out in the quarter-finals of Europe... We feel like those games were very much in our control. That’s the most frustrating thing about it. We had chances to win both games.”
Edinburgh are still growing as a team, and Bradbury is still developing as a No.8, having added a versatility to his game as a ball-carrier since Blair became head coach. But there is little doubt that the time is right for a move to a different club in a different league, and he believes the coaching team at Bristol are ideally equipped to help him keep developing his game.
“Obviously Pat Lam, John Muldoon and Jordan Crane were all No.8s. As I now see myself as an 8, there’s a great opportunity to learn from the best in their field.
“I’ve always had an inclination to go down [to England]. The physicality of that league, and the whole nature of the league, is a completely different animal to what we have up here.
“I’ve loved it here and I’ll miss it. But as much as it hurts to leave, it’s also exciting to try and take this form down south with me and into a new environment.”
The way we play now has opened up a whole new avenue of opportunity for us