ANOTHER woefully inadequate display by Edinburgh in a 26-10 defeat at the Scarlets on Friday night has left them winless from six league games during this calendar year, and provided few signs of encouragement for the capital outfit’s beleaguered supporters ahead of their Challenge Cup quarter-final encounter against La Rochelle at Murrayfield in five days' time.
The team has managed to pick up two wins in 2017 in the pool stage. While their 49-3 demolition of Romanian minnows Timisoara Saracens in late-January was routine, an 23-18 success over a strong but not quite full-strength Harlequins outfit at the Stoop a week earlier suggests this team might not be a completely lost cause.
The problem is that those victories were two months ago and we have watched in horror as confidence has nose-dived since then to the point where players are now shovelling the ball to one another under pressure as if it is some sort of ticking time bomb ready to explode in their faces. It is going to take more than just a tightening up in a few key areas to turn recent diabolical performances into something worthwhile next Friday night against perhaps the most in-form team in all of Europe at the moment.
La Rochelle are eight points clear at the top of the French Top 14 league ladder, having picked up 11 consecutive victories in all competitions since early December. They have conquered Racing 92, Toulouse and Toulon away from home during this period, so coming to a deserted Murrayfield – ticket sale updates have not been available this week – is unlikely to fill them with any great sense of dread.
It feels as if Edinburgh’s best hope will be if La Rochelle decide to focus on their quest for domestic glory and send a second-strong outfit across, but that would not be in keeping with their approach to the Challenge Cup so far – and home winger Damian Hoyland certainly doesn’t expect the Frenchmen to take it easy this coming weekend.
“I would have thought that if they are going to win the league then they would want to push to win the cup as well. You don’t get to the top of the the French league by having just five good players, so whatever side they put out against us will be a good team,” he said. “I watch quite a bit of French rugby on television. Although they are probably a bit more structured than other French teams, they still play a lovely open style – ‘jouie’ as they say – and like to throw the ball about. They’ve got big fast guys who are great at offloading as well, and being top of the French league just now shows that it is working for them. So it will be a different style of rugby to what we are used to, a much more open game because that’s the way the French like to play,” he added.
Hoyland insisted that his team can turn things around in time for Friday night, but he did not have an answer when asked if he can put his finger on why their European form should be in such stark contrast to their league showings.
“Truthfully, I have no idea. I don’t think it is anything mentally, and we are not doing anything differently in training, it just happens to be the Cup games that we do better. We know we have not been as clinical as we need to be in our recent league games, we’ve been lacking that killer edge, but we’ve continued to work hard and believe we will find it again,” he said.
“We’re all looking forward to being back at Murrayfield for a massive game this weekend. Hopefully we’ll have a big crowd for it.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here