ALLAN DELL arrived at yesterday’s press call in Murrayfield’s North Stand bearing gifts in the form of a tray of pastries snaffled from an adjacent conference room – but the prop insisted there would be no such generosity on Friday night against Timisoara Saracens in Edinburgh’s final pool match of this year’s European Challenge Cup campaign.
The occasion will mark the capital outfit’s long awaited decampment from the vast surroundings of Murrayfield Stadium to the rather more intimate setting of nearby Myreside, and having already hammered the Romanians 17-59 away from home in round one, is is hard to envisage this being anything other than a triumphant occasion for the hosts. However, Dell insisted that it is vital that the team avoid making life difficult for themselves by putting the cart before the horse.
"First and foremost we've just got to go in there and do the job of getting the five points. We have put ourselves in a great position to get a home quarter-final so we've just got to concentrate on keeping playing like we have in the past few weeks,” he said.
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““I believe their season ended in November and I don't think they have played much rugby since then, but you know in these kind of games where you think there is a good chance to get points that you need to go in with the right frame of mind and focus on your own role."
"We played them over there, obviously, and they were a big bunch of men, really physical and strong, but when we stuck to our game and got our skills right we put them away. Towards the end of the game we got a bit loose, lost some structure and let them back in a bit. We need to front up physically from the start, that's the main thing,” he added.
Having just become the first team to beat Harlequins at the Stoop this season, Edinburgh go into the match on a high, but they know that they need a bonus point win to be certain of qualifying for the knock-out stages as group winners, and consistency has been a major stumbling block this year - so it is vital that there is no drop-off in intensity despite the humble pedigree of this week's opposition.
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“We’ve had some really good results, like beating Ulster here [at Murrayfield], but then the following weekend we lost to Dragons away, and that’s a rollercoaster we need to get off,” agreed Dell.
“We’re going to carry on doing things the way we do and hopefully kick-on and start getting some good momentum. Hopefully we can use this European competition, like we have done in past seasons, to kick-start our league campaign.”
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