EDINBURGH forward Magnus Bradbury believes his team can take heart from their display against Scarlets on Saturday, even though the 25-27 loss all but officially ended their hopes of a top-three finish in PRO14 Conference B. Bradbury, who scored the opening try in the match at Murrayfield, is confident that the improvement shown by Edinburgh will stand them in good stead for the rest of the season - which includes a last-16 tie early next month in the Champions Cup.
“In terms of what happened last week, our performance was hugely encouraging,” he said, referring to the 10-22 defeat by Munster seven days earlier, in which the Irish team had the win pretty much in the bag by half-time. “What we wanted to do was make sure we take a step forward from last week. Last week wasn’t the way we wanted to play.
“But this week was hugely encouraging in terms of the performance. We can’t fault the effort at all. We just need to be more clinical when we’re in the opposition 22.”
While the qualifying procedure for next season’s European competitions has yet to be finalised, the only guaranteed way of getting into next season’s Champions Cup is by finishing in the top three in your conference. That task was tough enough for Edinburgh before Saturday, but is now all but impossible. Even if they won all four of their remaining matches - something that is implausible given they have only won four out of the 12 they have played so far - they would have to rely on both third-placed Scarlets and fourth-placed Cardiff Blues slipping up.
But they will still treat those four fixtures - first against Benetton on Sunday, then Connacht, Cardiff and the Dragons - as vital in the hope that other results do go their way. And any temptation to view them as meaningless end-of-season matches will surely be resistible given there are places in that European match to be competed for.
“Every game now is a must-win, and obviously the game against Scarlets was must-win as well,” Bradbury added. “So when Europe comes around and it’s announced who we’ve got, we’ll look at it then. It’ll be hugely exciting. But our focus right now is Treviso next week.”
Edinburgh will find out their last-16 opponents when the draw for the Champions Cup is made a week tomorrow. The games themselves will take place on the first weekend in April.
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