It looked a gamble at the time, but the decision of former Scotland captain Henry Pyrgos to leave Glasgow Warriors and join Edinburgh last summer looked ever shrewder as the club’s latest batch of recruits was unveiled yesterday.
The addition to the current squad that has earned the right to host a Champions Cup quarter-final this weekend, of two more dynamic Fijians to join Bill Mata, who has lit up their Champions Cup campaign, another powerful South African to join WP Nel, Allan Dell, Pierre Schoeman, Duhan van der Merwe and Jaco van der Walt and an Australian who has been holding his own in the English Premiership, has added to the growing excitement about this squad’s potential at a key moment in this campaign.
This weekend sees them play host to Munster in a Champions Cup quarter-final, immediately after they began a run of four matches that their coach, Richard Cockerill, had said they need to win if they are to reach the Pro14 play-offs and re-join Europe’s elite, by beating the reigning European and Pro14 champions.
Friday’s win may have been against a team deprived of its leading players, but the Irish province has demonstrated its strength in depth in dominating on two fronts in the domestic competition and the Champions Cup and in many ways it was the best possible preparation for this week’s visit of Munster because Leinster’s second string go about their work in the sort of prosaic fashion that is more associated with their neighbours.
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The now highly experienced Pyrgos, who has established himself as Edinburgh’s first choice scrum-half since leaving George Horne and Ali Price to battle for the Glasgow No.9 jersey, seemed to acknowledge that in his assessment of the performance.
“Leinster are a quality team and they have a lot of depth throughout their squad (so) it was good for confidence to get a win at home,” he said.
“The European quarter-final will be really intense (and) we know we're going to have to be a lot better than we were against Leinster to compete, but it's obviously good to get a win and build some confidence.”
Clearly, he is revelling in playing behind a pack that now looks stronger than the national side’s with regular Scotland starter All Dell playing second fiddle to Schoeman and Mata’s explosiveness adding an extra dimension to back-row options that include Scotland quartet John Barclay, Hamish Watson, Jamie Ritchie and Magnus Bradbury.
“Our team is obviously built around a really strong forward game and they were awesome. They got real dominance in every area of the game. As a nine that's great and we took full advantage of it,” Pyrgos said of the way they set about Leinster.
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“With our forward pack, we will back ourselves against anyone. Munster are a quality team and they pride themselves in that area as well, so it will be tough, but the boys work really hard in training to get that dominance in games. It was great to see it against Leinster.”
Pyrgos meanwhile agreed with his coach’s immediate post-match observation on Friday that the Leinster clash had let them shake off some rust.
“It wasn't a great start by us but you've got to stay in the game and just go to the next job,” he said of their recovery from 8-0 down to record a 28-11 win.
“We got back in the game, put pressure on them, worked our way ahead on the scoreboard and managed to take the game away from them at the end. Rugby is like that sometimes. We would have liked a better start, it didn't happen, but I was proud of the guys because of the way they stuck at it to get ahead and take the game away.”
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