Gilchrist’s call to arms (and hands) as lost ball costs Edinburgh

● We must use possession better and dominate the mauls, says new co-captain

There has been plenty of chat emanating from the Edinburgh camp in the build-up to this campaign about the squad being bolstered by exciting fresh faces equipped to deliver a more expansive gameplan, but there was precious little evidence of this brave new dawn when the campaign kicked off with a depressingly predictable 34-16 defeat in Cardiff on Saturday evening.

There were five summer recruits in the Edinburgh back-line, but we barely got a chance to see what they are capable of with the ball in hand because the team spent most of the match defending in their own half. For a club which prides itself on forward power, this was a worryingly ineffectual performance.

Edinburgh might have won all of their own set-piece ball, but they lacked the aggression and cohesion in subsequent phases to secure the quality of possession which would have given centres Solomoni “Junior” Rasolea and Sasa Tofilau the chance to make their mark on the game.

Co-captain Grant Gilchrist has challenged his pack to respond with a dominant performance against the Scarlets at Murrayfield on Friday night.

“We know the work we have been doing and need to trust it and put a performance out there because Saturday night was not the team that I have been part of during pre-season. We have to put that to bed and focus on Scarlets this weekend,”saidthebigsecondrow. “We are putting pressure on ourselves as a forward pack because last week wasn’t good enough – a 100 per cent [success rate] in the scrums and line-outs isn’t good enough – we set our standards up here [points to the ceiling].”

“We need to go out there and not just win the ball at scrum and line-out, but dominate in the mauls, which gives us the chance to vary our attack and use the new guys we have brought into our backline. If you look at our eight, they are good enough to beat anybody in Europe.

“It’s one thing winning the ball, it’s another thing making sure it’s a good launch and that you’re getting the result you want out of it, and I don’t think that really happened as far as the lineout was concerned on Saturday,” he continued.

“We were winning good ball but then we’d try a check delivery and they’d get through on the nine – which is just one example where we’ve got to block properly. We have roles to play, over and above just winning the ball.

“We had a few good mauls in the first half when we drove them quite well but there were other ones when we bounced out and dropped the ball, and ended up defending for 40

0 Grant Gilchrist says Edinburgh must use their possession much better if they are to win games. phases or whatever. Winning the ball is one thing but we would give it away in the next phase because we were too slow to the breakdown.

“So that is a massive focus for us this week and it comes from getting our shape right in attack and getting over the gain line, in which case the clear becomes easy. If your shape is a bit poor and it is slow ball then you get hit behind the gain line and then everything gets much harder.

“They kept the ball better than we did and eventually that wore us down. If we can keep the ball and put teams under pressure the way Cardiff did to us then teams will break.”

After an injury-ravaged couple of years, Gilchrist is clearly delighted to finally be back in action, and he doesn’t think it will be long until he is fully up to pace.

“I am now three games in [including two pre-season friendlies against Sale Sharks and Newcastle Falcons] and feel I am getting that match fitness back. If you have not played a lot you have to get out there and get used to reacting to situations. You can do all the fitness in the world but it is different to playing a game of rugby. I feel I can get better and better every week,” he explained.

After just ten competitive games in the previous two seasons, the 26-year-old has a pretty decent excuse for being slightly rusty. It is not quite so easy to accept the collective malaise which the Edinburgh squad as a whole still can’t seem to shake off. Chris Jordan has complete trust in expert assurances that there is “more than enough security” for England’s tour of Bangladesh – but will still respect any team-mate who thinks differently.

Jordan has become the second player to promise he will travel if selected at the end of this month.

The fast bowler made a quick decision after England’s security adviser Reg Dickason briefed the squad that there was no reason to stay at home despite the terror attack in Dhaka in July which resulted in the loss of 29 lives.

Moeen Ali was the first to pledge his presence on the plane to Bangladesh – after Jonny Bairstow gave a very strong indication he will be on board too, and Test captain Alastair Cook is understood to have promised the same privately.

Cook’s limited-overs counterpart Eoin Morgan is still a very notable ‘don’t know’ – while Jos Buttler, Chris Woakes and Alex Hales were also all undecided when they last spoke publicly on the matter.

Morgan will be required to make his mind up soon, following the conclusion of England’s limited-overs summer in today’s one-off Natwest Twenty20 against Pakistan at Old Trafford – and the selectors are planning to name squads next week for both the three one-dayinternationalsand two Test matches.

For Jordan, there was relatively little soul-searching once Dickason spelled out his findings after a factfinding trip to Bangladesh.

“If selected, I will definitely go,” said Jordan.

“Reg went over and brought back a thorough report – as he does for any trip ... everything from a security point of view, all of our routes to and from hotels and in and around training and playing days.

“I trust his judgment, and after the meeting I was pretty happy to go.”

Jordan’s concerns ended there but he insists other views must be respected.

“For sure, you like to stick together as a team as much as possible,” he added. “But if someone doesn’t decide to go you can’t hold that against them either.”