Bradley can now afford to reach deep into his squad

Rugby reporter

Friday 5 October 2012

The Heineken Cup is just more than a week away.

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Alasdair Reid

Time, then, for Edinburgh's top players to put their feet up for the weekend and give the second-stringers a run? Not any more.

That might have been the pattern last season, when coach Michael Bradley kept his big beasts in their cages in the RaboDirect Pro12 so they could do maximum damage in the European competition. Now, though, after a summer of squad building, the distance between the best and the rest in the Edinburgh dressing room is not nearly so stark.

So, while Bradley has told Stuart McInally, Nick De Luca and Geoff Cross that they can, indeed, watch tonight's match with Treviso at Murrayfield from the stands, you would struggle to make the case that Edinburgh have weakened their selection with players of the calibre of Dave Denton, Ben Atiga and Willem Nel taking their places. There is no place either for the new Scotland full-back Tom Brown. Defence coach Billy McGinty listed Brown among the resting, but he also suggested that Greig Tonks, who will wear the No.15 shirt this evening, has put in such an impressive series of performances in the early weeks of the new season that the competition for that particular slot has become intriguingly hot."He seems to have embraced what we're doing here at Edinburgh," said McGinty, who explained that the physical demands of playing at full-back are significantly less than in other positions. "We're not surprised by his ability."Tonks, who joined Edinburgh from Northampton, was born in South Africa and raised in England, but he is Scottish-qualified on the strength of a mother who hails from Ayrshire. Asked if that eligibility could soon become significant, McGinty was non-committal, but he agreed that the player is on a promising trajectory."At the moment, I'm not sure if he's ready," said McGinty, "but the more games he plays, the better he will get. It's up to the national selectors to make that decision.After last weekend's 32-12 away loss to Newport Gwent Dragons, the man who may have most to gain from a strong individual perfor-mance this evening is Chris Leck, the scrum-half who has been offered a rare reminder that rugby matches start in the first minute rather than the 60th. Leck takes the place of Richie Rees, and the challenge from McGinty is that he has to state his case for that being something more than a temporary arrangement."We had it planned three weeks ago that we were going to give Chris this game," McGinty explained. "He needs to have a go and show us what he can do."Of course, McGinty's primary concern after last weekend's thrashing at Rodney Parade is with the defensive shortcomings that were revealed there. The former rugby league player could take some comfort from the fact that most of the damage was done by a barrage of penalties and a dropped goal, but a 20-point margin of defeat is still an embarrassing result in anyone's book. However, McGinty warned Edinburgh fans not to expect the kind of easy ride they had watching their team hammer Zebre, Italy's other PRO12 side, 41-10 a few weeks ago."Treviso are a very good team," he said firmly. "Last season, they lost by two or three points on numerous occasions. They beat Scarlets last week. They like to play a bit, so we have to be on our guard. "They are certainly a better team than Zebre, and have better players. It will be a real challenge for us but, hopefully, we can get back on the horse and really go at them."

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Bradley can now afford to reach deep into his squad

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