IT has been a dreadful season for Edinburgh, but they have a real chance to finish on a high note. If they can just learn to calm down, cut out the silly mistakes and take their chances, there is no reason they cannot win their next games against two of the three teams below them in the Guinness PRO12.
Duncan Hodge, the interim head coach, says part of the frustration for him has been seeing players making so many uncharacteristic errors. "Little things set you off track," he said. "Last week, we scored three tries to one but still lost the game.
"Some things are a bit hard to work out. There were errors, everyone can see that, dropped balls. Hamish [Watson] dropped a couple of balls. You don't see that from him – when did that ever happen? Duncan [Weir] missed a kick that he normally doesn't miss. Some things you can't legislate for – they all add up."
The other issue he needs to solve is the slow starts. On rare occasions, they have been able to claw back huge deficits to rescue results, but the reality is that if you let yourself go 22 points down, as they did last week, you will rarely win. That is particularly true in Treviso, where they play tonight, since the Italian side feed off the crowd.
To win there, Hodge has mainly stuck with the side that fell just short of a remarkable recovery last week, though the only change is a notable one. Duncan Weir is again dropped from the starting XV and Jason Tovey gets in ahead of him.
Like Grant Gilchrist, the Edinburgh co-captain, Weir seems to be in the strange position of being deemed good enough to get into the Scotland squad last month but not to be first choice for his club.
Benetton Treviso: L McLean; A Esposito, T Iannone, A Sgarbi, L Sperandio; I McKinley, E Gori; F Zani, L Bigi, S Ferrari, M Fuser, D Budd (C), F Minto, A Steyn, R Barbieri. Replacements: D Giazzon, A Porolli, T Pasquali, J-F Montauriol, M Lazzaroni, G Bronzini, T Tebaldi, T Benvenuti.
Edinburgh: G Bryce; D Hoyland, C Dean, P Burleigh, R Scholes; J Tovey, N Fowles; M McCallum, R Ford (C), S Berghan, F McKenzie, B Toolis, V Mata, H Watson, V Fihaki.
Replacements: S McInally, D Appiah, K Bryce, G Gilchrist, C du Preez, S Hidalgo-Clyne, D Weir, J Rasolea.
Referee: F Murphy (Ireland)
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