LAST season in the URC, Edinburgh won five of their first seven matches in a run of fixtures that for a time took them to the top of the table. Just one of the seven, away to Benetton, was a defeat, with the other a home draw with the Stormers.
This season, after just four matches, they have already lost three. Far from closing in on the summit, they are in the lower half of the league, with Friday night’s 22-19 home defeat by the Lions having left them in ninth place before yesterday’s games.
There are a couple of mitigating factors in that reversal of fortunes. First, the fixture list has been altogether less benign. And second, the South African sides, who took a while to get up to speed on their introduction to the league, have hit the ground running this time round.
Nonetheless, for a team with serious ambitions of bettering last season’s quarter-final exit, the consecutive defeats by the Bulls, Stormers and Lions have to be a real concern. Since thumping the Dragons 44-6 in their first game of the season, the capital club have picked up just three bonus points in
defeat – one on Friday at the DAM Health Stadium 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.
Edinburgh looked sharp enough in attack against the Lions, and Darcy Graham was once more in excellent form as he scored his sixth try in four games. Bill Mata and Ben Muncaster also touched down as the home team took leads of 5-0, 12-5 and 19-12, with Emiliano Boffelli
converting two. But the South Africans hit back each time with three tries and two conversions of their own, before a late penalty from stand-off Gianni Lombard gave them the victory.
It was a fiercely physical contest, one which the Lions arguably deserved to win thanks to their ability to stay in the fight even when under heavy pressure and behind on the scoreboard. Nonetheless, it was one which Edinburgh should have won but for their own shortcomings, according to lock forward Glen Young.
“I think we lost the game ourselves,” he 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.
“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.”
Blair himself offered a similar verdict, praising the Lions but insisting his own team had to look at their shortcomings.
“We’ve had two very tough away games against South African opposition where I thought we played well,” he said. “We had a game here where we did some good stuff, but 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.
