Top-three hopes all but gone now
EDINBURGH 25 SCARLETS 27
Edinburgh’s hopes of a top-three finish in their PRO14 conference are all but over after they lost a hugely entertaining game at Murrayfield.
The home side were in the contest right to the death as they looked for the opening that would give Jaco van der Walt the chance for a match-winning drop-goal.
But a defiant Scarlets defence ensured that the chance never came for the stand-off, who had earlier missed two kicks at goal as his team tried to regain the lead.
The losing bonus that Edinburgh took from the game leaves them 14 points behind the Welsh team in the race to secure the top-three position that guarantees Champions Cup rugby next season. They have played fewer games, but even if they win all four remaining fixtures with bonus points, Scarlets will finish above them if they take six points from the two matches they have left.
“I think it’s going to be tough for us from here on in,” Edinburgh coach Richard Cockerill accepted.
“It’s a game we could have easily won, but we didn’t manage territory particularly well in the first half.
“We fell a little bit short. It finished three tries apiece, so it’s a game we could have won, but a bit of luck and fortune wasn’t on our side.”
Edinburgh may not have much to play for now in Conference B, but they are still in this season’s Champions Cup and next week will find out who their opponents are in the last 16.
“Europe is going to be the focus now, I suppose,” Cockerill added. “But we’ll try as hard as we can to get as many points as we can.”
The weather felt closer to summer than winter, and both teams made the most of it by attacking with the ball in hand for much of a crazy first half that saw the teams score two tries each. Edinburgh’s came from Magnus Bradbury and Darcy Graham, and with van der Walt converting both and adding two penalties, they went in at the break 20-17 ahead.
But Scarlets, whose first-half scores had come from converted tries by Tyler Morgan and Johnny Mcnicholl and a Dan Jones penalty, took control early in the second 40. Dane Blacker got their third try, and Jones converted and added a penalty to make it 20-27.
Edinburgh sub Dave Cherry got a try back from close-range, but Van der Walt failed to convert from out on the right, then missed a long-range penalty before his team’s final assault was repulsed.