Lions By a Whisker

 

Browsing Rugby Twitter after Edinburgh's defeat to Lions on Friday night you’d have thought some giant killing act had occurred as opposed to a close battle between two teams who've never won a major trophy between them that could have gone either way.

Yes, there were plenty of Scotland internationals in the Edinburgh side and no Springboks in the Lions team but I'm not sure that's the advantage that many think it was. 

All that said Edinburgh do have to be better but there were factors and there were reasons and then there were some errors on the field from both individuals and as a team that all led to the outcome.

First up there was the fact that the squad had spent 2 weeks away from home in South Africa and flew back, after a 3hr delay on the runway, late on Sunday, leaving only 4 days to recover and be ready for another game. Training only resumed on Tuesday. 

A significant part of Edinburgh’s creativity comes from Ben Vellacott and Mark Bennett and to have neither of those available for selection was a blow. There’s no doubt in my mind that the best 9/10/12/13 combination that Edinburgh can deploy is - Vellacott, Kinghorn, Lang, Bennett. 

There were moments in the match that could have turned it.

Boffelli being tap tackled which otherwise would have been a certain try.

Had McInally chosen to pass to Kinghorn on his big run that would probably have been a score.

Had Graham chosen to pass to Immelman on his outside - definitely a try.

The referee awarding Lions a free kick for Edinburgh delaying a lineout in their 22 may have led to a try or at the very least wouldn't have ended with us back in our own half. Incidentally there was exactly 14 seconds from the time the ball crossed the touchline to that free kick being given. 

Injuries did not help. There was an early bath for Mcinally, a blood replacement period for Young, failed head injury assessments for de Bruin and Watson and the late injury to Graham following his chase back.

There were some individual mistakes. A couple of poor tackles. A couple of dropped passes. Our lineout malfunctioned at a couple of key moments.

On first view in the stadium I thought Immelman had been poor but on review only a dropped pass stuck out as a negative in his performance. Only Darcy beat more defenders in the whole match.

I know criticism of Blair Kinghorn is the default for a significant number of people but I thought he had a decent game without being a standout. He missed a touch kick in the first half and the choice to kick that right when the penalty was in the left side of the field seemed strange but I can only assume that was down to the wind conditions inside the DAM. 

Also on re-watch my suspicions that Matt Currie had been a passenger of sorts was confirmed. No carries or defenders beaten. That’s not to disparage him as he’s a different kind of player to Mark Bennett who had 3 carries and beat 3 defenders last week but it does highlight the creativity we lacked against Lions.  

On the whole I don’t think Edinburgh played too badly under the circumstances and perhaps towards the end were victims of their own ambition by trying for that BP try and a 7pt margin.  With the game tied at 19 all we might have been better to have kept it tight and hopefully got a penalty from the ever over officious Piardi. Even after Lions edged ahead we might have been wiser to have kept the ball in the middle of the park for the same reason. A draw would probably have been a fair result. 

4 games in and we have 1 win and 8 points. On the face of it, it doesn't look good but to put that in perspective we are the only side to have played 3 games against SA sides in those opening games. Some of our rivals have yet to play a single game against SA opposition. Only Leinster and Glasgow have wins against them. SA sides have won 10 of 12 games against European opposition.

So the hope is that this evens itself out as the season goes on. My best advice just now? Don’t look at the league table until Christmas.