Gutted coach says Edinburgh have only themselves to blame for defeat

SEAN EVERITT was unable to hide his frustration after watching his Edinburgh side suffer defeat in South Africa and miss out on a place in the last four of the Challenge Cup.

The former Sharks coach watched on as his side went into the break with the lead, but a poor 20 minutes at the start of the second half left them with too much to do. He was not willing to make any excuses for his team and said the travel and logistics could not be blamed despite Edinburgh making their second trip to South Africa in a matter of weeks.

“I’m gutted,” he said. “So much went into the preparation, the logistics and the travel – and the travel was made easy so we have no excuses with regards to that. It’s about us staying focused for the entire 80.

“We were up against four Springboks in the tight five and I’ve never made excuses for that because we’ve got our own [internationals] as well. So to capitulate like that in the second half was extremely disappointing, especially after the confidence we took into the second half.

“I thought we handled the set-piece battle well in the first half, struggled a little bit with the aerial battle in the first 15 minutes of the game and then got into it after when we won some of those battles.

“At half time we were obviously confident we could pull through and then our set-piece came under the pump and we gave away penalties there. I think the penalty count in the second half was 8-1 and that tells you a story.

“We didn’t get the territory we got in the first half. I thought we were clinical when we got into the opposition 22, scoring a try and kicking those penalties but unfortunately we let ourselves down in the second half.”

It was a hot day, but Everitt had declared it the best time of year to be playing in Durban given the lack of humidity and lower temperatures, so he was unwilling to give his players a reason to blame anything other than their own performance.

He continued: “There are no excuses. We trained in it [the weather] through the week and we were here for two weeks before. I’m not going to say it wouldn’t have an effect because it obviously would but not to the extent that it was the reason for our loss.

“Edinburgh win rugby games when we give away 10 or less penalties and today we gave away 12. The trend continues. If we gave away less than 10, we’ll win. In the first half we were on track – we only gave away four, but then conceded eight in the second half and it didn’t allow us to put ourselves in a position to score points.”