DARCY Graham has been on exceptional form so far this season, scoring six tries in four games for Edinburgh to go to the top of the United Rugby Championship’s scoring charts. Five of those tries came in just two games last month – two against the Dragons and then a hat-trick against the Stormers – so it was no surprise yesterday when the winger was named Edinburgh’s player of the month for September.
Graham himself, however, does not think he has been doing anything special, and attributes a lot of his success to good fortune. “It’s been not too bad,” he said of his start to the season. “I’m enjoying playing, getting my hands on the ball nice and early at the start of the season and building that confidence.
“I think since the start of the season a lot has come my way. I’ve got a lot of easy tries. I’ve been a bit lucky - it’s just the way it goes sometimes and I’m on a good run just now.
“Rugby for me is such a simple game. I don’t try and over-complicate it: I just get the ball and run.
“I run then think. Just heads up, try and see space, then go for it. Just get the ball and use my feet, beat them bigger defenders. That’s the boys I’m going out to look for - the bigger boys.”
Graham will be out to beat the big boys of Benetton at home on Saturday as Edinburgh aim to return to winning ways after three consecutive defeats, and he does not think the team are too far away from the sort of form that will guarantee victory. “We’ve not been playing terrible. We’ve been playing good rugby: it’s just individual, small errors that have left us down and other teams have capitalised on that by scoring easy tries.
“We just need to be a bit more squeaky clean and play in the right areas. It’s not like a massive fix-up for us - like I say it’s just small, individual errors.”
Edinburgh sponsors Scottish Building Society always give £500 to the player of the month’s chosen charity, and Graham has chosen the Scottish Ambulance Service because of how well they looked after his brother Clark following a serious car crash nearly two years ago.
“They did a very good job that night - they were on the scene very quickly,” he explained. “He’s doing really well. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s just nice to pay back to them.”
Why are you making commenting on HeraldScotland 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 here