Young: Soft moments cost Edinburgh dear and need to be addressed
Edinburgh lock Glen Young believes that a few “soft moments” let his team down on Friday night when they lost 19-22 to the Lions – their third league defeat in a row.
The capital club led 5-0, 12-5 and 19-12 in the match at the DAM Health Stadium thanks to tries from Bill Mata, Darcy Graham and Ben Muncaster, two of which were converted by Emiliano Boffelli.
But the South African side hit back each time with three tries and two conversions of their own, before a late penalty from playmaker Gianni Lombard gave them the victory.
Edinburgh looked sharp enough in attack, and Graham was once more in superb form as he took his try tally for the season to six from four games.
However, defensive lapses cost them dearly, as Young admitted.
“I think we lost the game ourselves,” the forward said.
“We had a lot of good moments, but ultimately we weren’t good enough in our 22 at defending our own line.
“We let in some cheap tries, and if you do that against teams like the Lions you’re always going to struggle.
“Ultimately, it’s not good enough. We need to address those little soft moments where we’re letting their boys into the game.
“I think for 70 minutes we were there or thereabouts, but there were just a few soft moments which we can’t let happen.
“We pride ourselves on our energy never being questioned but ultimately it comes down to being clinical.
“That’s what Mike (Blair, the head coach) said after the game – we’ve got to have our foot on the throat for 80 minutes but we didn’t.
“We’ve played South African teams three weeks in a row and they are big physical boys.
“It’s been a good test for us to see where we are at physically, but we’ve taken a few knocks. It was tough going.”
Since thumping the Dragons 44-6 in their first game of the season, Edinburgh have picked up just three bonus points in defeat – one on Friday night and another two when they lost 33-31 to the Bulls in Johannesburg.
Their other match was a 34-18 loss to the Stormers, last season’s champions, in Cape Town.
Last year they had a run of relatively easy fixtures early on and went top of the league, but this season they have had things a lot tougher.
“We’ve had two very tough away games against South African opposition where I thought we played well,” Blair said.
“We had a game here where we did some good stuff, but ultimately we’re going to have to have a look at what we’re doing, because we should be capitalising more on the territory we had in the second half.
“Credit to the Lions for sticking in there: they got their danders up and they created a lot of energy and had a lot of trust in what they were trying to do. I thought they were excellent.
“The Lions have won three games on the trot away from home and they are the perceived weakest South African team, so this is a tough league.”
New re-signing Duhan van der Merwe should be available for Saturday’s home game against Benetton.
But Graham, Hamish Watson and Stuart McInally are among the doubts after coming off injured on Friday night, while summer signing Wes Goosen may need another week to complete his rehab from a calf injury.