Ritchie vows Edinburgh will deliver in derby

JAMIE RITCHIE insists Edinburgh will come out all guns blazing to overturn the 12-point deficit in next week’s 1872 Cup decider at Murrayfield.

Edinburgh lost the first leg 22-10 on Friday night as Glasgow Warriors made home advantage count at fortress Scotstoun.

But it’s still all to play for ahead of next Saturday’s return match, which will be played in front of more than 30,000 fans at Murrayfield.

Ritchie admits that Edinburgh were fairly quiet as an attacking force on Friday night, not helped by the wet and windy conditions. But the

Scotland skipper believes there is much more to come as he and his team-mates look to turn things around in the inter-city double-header.

‘Derby games are often closely fought and the weather turned on us in the second half at Scotstoun,’ said Ritchie (right).

‘That made it a bit harder to score tries, but credit to Glasgow for managing to get themselves over the line a couple of times.

‘But I’m backing us to chase that down and we’ll do our best to turn it around next week.

‘It was definitely a frustrating one for us. We left a lot out there, a lot of it through our own errors.

‘Hopefully the weather is a wee bit better. The real focus will be on taking the opportunities we create and making sure we take it to them at home.

‘A drier ball would help (our attacking players). Keeping hold of it as well, when we have the ball and are attacking.

‘Making sure that we are accurate in how we execute. That would be another thing.’

Edinburgh were well in the game for large periods on Friday night, but were left to rue a loss of discipline in the second half.

They coughed up too many penalties and gifted Warriors some terrific field position from which to attack.

They also lost Grant Gilchrist to a yellow card 15 minutes from the end, with Glasgow scoring to pull clear shortly after.

‘We were up on the territory stats and created a few opportunities, but our discipline let us down,’ said Ritchie. ‘With back-to-back maul penalties and a yellow card, they scored two tries.

‘It’s really tough when you are having to defend with 14 men.

‘We know that Glasgow have a really strong maul. It’s something we looked at during the week and that we felt we dealt with pretty well in the first half.

‘But when you give them so many entries through poor discipline, they’re going to take a couple.’