SO much for Edinburgh's recent bounce.
It has proved to be as illusory as all that have gone before as they hit reverse gear on the results front while picking up even more injuries to key players that could have a knock-on effect in weeks ahead. Ross Ford, David Denton and Rory Sutherland all came off hurt on Saturday.
For all that, this was a game which left Edinburgh wondering how they had managed to lose. True, they got on the wrong end of a couple of howlers from the match officials, but they still played a quarter of the game a man up and created enough scoring chances to have won with some comfort.
So while Alan Solomons, the Edinburgh head coach, was fully justified in complaining about not getting the rub of the green when it came to decisions, the coaches and players really have to worry more about themselves, as Matt Scott, the centre, acknowledged.
"Everyone is gutted after that," he said. "There were a couple of decisions that did not go our way but we need to take the referee out of the equation. We had enough territory and ball to win that game, they had a couple of yellow cards and we did not capitalise on that. We coughed up too much ball in the first half, it was just really disappointing."
With floods affecting the region in recent weeks it was no surprise that the pitch was sodden, making the ball greasy. That may have had something to do with why Edinburgh played so much one-pass rugby but it does not explain ignoring overlaps, the lack of support when they did make breaks and the struggles in the scrum.
Kelly Haimono, the Zebre fly-half, put over an early penalty, only for his team to fall behind to the one occasion Edinburgh did get things right. Tim Visser cut a perfect line to take the inside pass after a maul had sucked in the defence. He then offloaded to Roddy Grant for the early try that, following Tom Heathcote's conversion, gave the Scottish side the lead at the break.
Haimona pegged them back after a strange penalty decision against Scott, but it was an Edinburgh blunder when it looked as though they were taking control, which gave Zebre the lead. A huge knock-on in the home 22 handed over possession for Leonardo Sarto to race down the touchline with Guilio Bisegni in support to take the scoring pass.
With Haimona's conversion, it was a three-point game and Edinburgh had plenty of possession and plenty of time to recover, which is when the officials took a hand. Sloppy Edinburgh defending allowed Matteo Pratichetti, one of 11 Italian internationalists returning to club action, to slip through and send Michele Visentin, the replacement full-back, racing for the corner.
He was being tackled into touch as he grounded the ball and to most people there, including all 30 players on the field, TV replays seemed to show he grounded the ball on the touchline. However, Stefano Penne, the Italian TMO, decided that he could not see the line clearly and the score stood. It appeared to be an injustice but Edinburgh can only blame themselves that it mattered.
"Sometimes a loss really focuses your mind and we will be looking carefully at what went wrong," said Scott. "Personally I am feeling rusty after six months out, there were a few things I was not happy with, and I'm sure it was the same for everyone. We will all take responsibility and come out firing next week against London Welsh.
"I thought we had turned a corner and could grind out these results. We need to be tougher on ourselves about not making silly errors at key times. I am confident that we will regroup, but it is frustrating."
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 hereComments are closed on this article