TRYING TIMES
Visser insists he’s leaving the capital with a heavy heart after six years of lethal finishing
TRIES are what makes rugby appealing. We can discuss all day the ins and outs of good rugby, what the so-called ‘purists’ live for in a 6-6 battle of two packs, but there is nothing that beats the sight of your team crossing the white line, time and again.
That is certainly uppermost in the minds of Edinburgh supporters buying tickets for Friday night’s European Challenge Cup semifinal with Newport Gwent Dragons.
Clinical finishing has lifted Glasgow on to another level and is what marked out Edinburgh’s ascendency a decade ago. It follows, then, that the team needs quality finishers.
In football, many great strikers have had their work ethic questioned, but they remain revered and sought after because they have the skills to put the ball in the net more often than not.
Tim Visser is perhaps rugby’s Robin van Persie. He has proven that much by scoring on his debuts for a raft of teams from schoolboy level to the Scotland international stage, and going on to take the Pro12 top try-scorer’s award on four occasions in six years at Edinburgh.
So, while he spoke positively this week of the effect on Edinburgh of Alan Solomons’ arrival as head coach, and how much he has improved as an all-round player, there is no hiding that his decision to leave the capital for Harlequins was born out of his love affair with and sense of loss over tries.
He is quite convincing when he says: ‘I love scoring but I’ve always said it’s not all about me, and the tries were just part of it.
‘Edinburgh have been great for me, provided a platform to play rugby, to be top try-scorer four times and get all the records and prizes that I’ve won over the seasons, and that’s been amazing.
‘For someone like me, a foreigner, to come into a Scottish set-up was great because I felt accepted from the word go. It was never my intention to play for Scotland when I first came to Edinburgh; it was just a career move to try to play rugby.
‘But, having been accepted like that, I managed to play some reasonable rugby and got myself into the Scotland team, which was fantastic. And the way I’ve been accepted by the fans and especially my fellow players is really good, and says something about the type of players and the kind of coaches we have in Scotland.’ Having stated that the move to London is not about money, Visser’s desire to get back to scoring regularly to compete for the Scotland jersey was as clear as the sun in the sky this week. Harlequins have told him they need a finisher and have no plans to move from their entertaining, expansive style. Having been little more than a bystander in countless matches in the past two seasons — his tally of 66 tries includes just six from this season — the move makes sense for Visser, if not Edinburgh.
He was close to overhauling Irishman Tommy Bowe three seasons back, and remains two behind the Ulster wing in the try charts now.
‘Being top try-scorer would be a fantastic accolade,’ admitted Visser, ‘but even being second with the amount of years I’ve spent in the league would be fantastic, and it’s testament to how we have played rugby in the past at Edinburgh and the amount of tries that I’ve literally just had to walk in, with guys like Nick de Luca and Ben Cairns setting up for me.
‘They provided a lot of tries for me and it’s been fairly easy at times but it shows what it’s like when you miss quality like that. It’s been a completely different set-up. We were able to score a lot of tries in the past and it came fairly easy to us but we couldn’t defend if our lives depended on it.
‘We’re now a completely different team and can all defend, even myself. We can hold teams out and we’ve suddenly become a good defensive team that can’t score tries. Or we were.
‘We’re now trying to get to that happy medium where we can do both and I think we’re getting there towards the end of this season, where we can score tries as well.
‘I always said back in the days when I was scoring a lot of tries that I would have happily swapped them for wins and every one is probably worth more now than some of those were back then, because we don’t score a lot of tries, and the ones we do we have to work hard for.
‘But I’ve also managed to set up a few this season, for guys like Hamish Watson, and that has been almost as satisfying as scoring them myself. Almost.’