Friday 13th March 2020 was a date that sounds as ominous as it turned out to be for rugby. Scotland were due to play Wales the very next day but with the team already in the principality, as well as pretty much every Scotland fan, the match was called off as Covid took hold of the world.
However there was one last hurrah as Scotland U20’s took on Wales U20’s at Parc Eiras and confounded the experts by comprehensively taking apart the Welsh side and scoring 52 points in the process. A feat which apparently no Scottish mens side, senior or under 20’s, has ever done before against a six nations side.
To confound the ‘experts’ and doomsayers further I count at least 13 of the fifteen who started that night have gone on in the short time since then to sign senior or academy contracts with Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sale Sharks, Harlequins and Leicester Tigers. Jack Blain was on the bench.
The young man who got the lion's share of the plaudits that night was Edinburgh’s own Nathan Chamberlain. Rightly so as he scored a hat trick of tries in a seven try rout and was flawless off the tee. The points he scored that night made his total for the tournament an impressive 63.
With Simon Hickey’s departure announced at the end of season clear out on 30th April 2020 everyone knew Edinburgh would be in the market for a new fly half.
Only 2 days later we thought that position was filled as the club announced the signing of Australian Jono Lance who was out of contract at Worcester. Then on 8th May 2020 Edinburgh intimated that Chamberlain had signed for the club on an Academy contract and we thought that would be that. Of course the headlines at the time all alluded to his performance against Wales although I’m sure the reasons behind his signing were slightly more in depth than one good game.
Job done fly half wise only for the Lance deal to fall through a month later before he’d set foot in the capital but after he’d appeared on Inside The Castle podcast. Work permit issues cited as the reason for the reversal.
That left two fly halves at the club. One senior and one on an academy contract who’d yet to play a senior game of rugby. In the month that followed it became apparent that as budgets took a hit because of COVID that there was no money for another experienced fly half. Richard Cockerill was quoted as saying,
““Well, we’re going to have to roll the dice and the young lads will get a go.”
Season 2019-2020 resumed on August 22nd as Edinburgh secured the 1872 cup again before welcoming Glasgow back to Murrayfield a week later for what by then was a dead rubber. Chamberlain had to be content with a view from the bench for the first game but then in the second got his debut for the full 80. He also got his first points off the tee.
The league semi final against Ulster followed and again he had to be content for a watching brief as the match went down to the wire before Edinburgh eventually came away empty handed.
In the following matches he got game time as follows -
Bordeaux - not in squad
Ospreys - 9 mins
Munster - 0 mins
Scarlets - 0 mins
Connacht - 0 mins
Then as Jaco got married and was drafted into the Scotland squad Nathan started the next 3 matches against Cardiff, Leinster and Ulster. The game against Cardiff being a stand out for the stand off as he scored 7 points in a fog shrouded Murrayfield. It was a composed performance helped in no small part by Henry Pyrgos’ man of the match display.
7 matches followed with the splinters in Chamberlain's nether regions reaching epic proportions before he was selected to start against Connacht last Saturday.
In a match dominated by the weather (as it always is in Galway) I would suggest that only Premier Sports premature announcement in a game that could have gone either way right up to the end robbed Chamberlain from being man of the match.
His first half break led directly to Edinburgh’s opening try and as all looked lost with the clock winding down his powerful and evasive run through the Connacht defence earned him his maiden Edinburgh try.
By all accounts he kicked the conversion to win the match for Edinburgh but thanks to the broadcasters desperation to start the La Liga highlights only the very few inside the stadium actually saw that happen.
It wasn’t just those admittedly shiny moments that caught my eye in regard to his performance. Connacht sent men down his channel repeatedly and his tackling was impressive and his kicking in the conditions was faultless.
It’s perhaps overegging it to say that this was a coming of age moment but it has appeared to me that when the margins have been tight in some of the losses Edinburgh have suffered this year there was a reluctance to introduce Chamberlain. This match and this display shows that he can do it when the chips are down.
I think we will be seeing more of him on the back of it.
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