News roundup

 Just a quick one folks as I know most of your attention is on the 6 Nations especially after such a fantastic Scotland performance at the weekend.

However, Edinburgh are at Dragons this week  so you’ll have that on Friday evening before hopefully seeing a second Scottish side triumph against the Welsh on Saturday.

For the non -Scottish Edinburgh fans out there enjoy Friday. That's yer lot. 

It has been a couple of weeks since we last played now punctuated by the A team win over Glasgow on Thursday last. There were some brief highlights posted on youtube 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWLFngeW_0I

and from the bits and pieces I’ve put together there were some hands definitely being raised. I hadn’t quite picked up on the fact that Charlie Savala had been playing Rugby league (pah) prior to joining the club so the fact that the guys at The Thistle have reported he may now be causing a back up fly half issue for Cockers after his brief performance is very interesting.

It was good to see Damien Hoyland and Murray McCallum back playing. Assuming they've come through this game unscathed I don’t think it’d be a surprise to see them feature on Friday.

Which brings me neatly to the team we may put out. I don’t think there will be a huge difference between what I suggested earlier - 

https://theburghwatch.blogspot.com/2021/01/edinburgh-starters-during-6-nations.html

but with the notable change that with Blair Kinghorn released from the Scotland squad I’d expect him to start. Hoyland to the wing alongside Sau and perhaps Muzza will slot in at Tighthead. 

Whilst we are on the subject of tightheads it was announced on Sunday that Simon Berghan will join Glasgow at the end of the season. I had suggested he was a probable departee but his destination has come as a surprise. He was a clear second choice at Edinburgh behind the continually impressive WP Nel and with Zander Fagerson at Glasgow it’s hard to see that situation changing for Berghan. Fagerson has said recently he won’t be a one club man so there maybe lies the solution to that conundrum.

Berghan is a decent player in the loose but his scrummaging is not up to the same standard. He’s very tall for a tighthead and if you watch closely at scrum time his right knee flirts with the ground regularly. Tightheads are the anchors in the scrum so someone like Nel is worth his weight in gold.

It was notable that as I chatted about his departure to some of my fellow fans that there was little in the way of consternation at his departure with most of the plaudits being about his personality as opposed to his play. I wish him well. He’ll get to be closer to Fraser Brown now than he was in that moment in the 1872 from a few years back.

Literally as I wrote this Edinburgh also announced the immediate signing of Loosehead Boan Venter from Cheetahs who had been widely rumoured to be joining the club. He alluded to his arrival recently on Instagram and here he is. He is welcome although I’ve no doubt the usual dissenting voices will bemoan the arrival of another non SQ player whilst conveniently forgetting we have signed 2 Scots in recent weeks for next season.

That's about it. There will be a full roundup of how our guys have gone for Scotland at the end of the 6 Nations when hopefully we will have something (more) to cheer.

I know I said there would be little in the way of politics in this blog but the way that the media, including the BBC,  have tried to drag the Scotland team through the mud over the kneeling/not kneeling before the game thing was shameful. They even had Aamer Anwar telling us how disappointed he was. It has been explained. There was no disrespect and ultimately the decision to kneel has to lie with the individual. 

If it’s a diktat then it has no meaning.