In summary, Played 7, won 4, lost 3 and we are fifth in the URC table. A couple of teams have played only 6 games but even had those postponed games happened we would still be fifth. Sharks, however, have only played 5 games and with 2 BP wins could be 4th, pushing Edinburgh to 6th.
Last year the international break was after 5 games and we had won 3, drawn 1 and lost 1. We were 4th.
On that metric alone you could argue we have gone backward but that would be to ignore the fact that it’s been a much tougher schedule. We have played 3 games against the South African sides who are proving to be a different proposition than last year's early season form would have you believe. We lost away in SA to both Bulls and Stormers before also going down at The DAM to LIons. 3 points from a potential 15 but that is our cross hemisphere travels done for the season and we don’t play Sharks until the end of January.
Here's last years table from this point
We have scored 35 tries to date. It was January of last season before we got to that total. Our points difference this year is +89.
Take a look here at how we’ve scored those points.
You can take that a number of ways. What I see is a team that has been given a brief to go for tries and because a winger is our top scorer and our back 3 have scored almost half our tries between them we don’t even get easy kicks at goal.
Incidentally only Leinster get a smaller percentage of their points from penalties (7%).
Our two best kickers are Boffelli and van der Walt. Boff was away with Argentina for the first 3 games. Jaco started against Bulls but was injured early doors so the kick that could have won us the game fell to Immelman who was probably 4th or 5th choice for that job. Even Boff’s success rate off the tee is only at 66% this season.
It could be argued then that this may have cost us points along the way but opting to kick a penalty means you haven’t scored a try so it's hard to say for sure. Once you made one choice the other timeline ceases to exist. Two Roads diverging etc.
So spelling it out. No team has scored more points or tries than Edinburgh have. No team has beaten more defenders or made more clean breaks than Edinburgh have. Only Scarlets have made more metres and that on its own hasn’t done them much good.
On the debit side though, Only Munster and Bulls have conceded more penalties.
We’ve even done something we’ve found quite hard in the past. Winning away from home and without our international players. This is a real sea change and I think pays massive tribute to the players that have stepped up in the absence of our stars. The likes of Adam McBurney and Matt Currie and Chris Dean have made the most of the absence of Cherry, Bennett and Lang through injury. It’s also a compliment to Mike Blair in bringing in quality non - Scots such as Wes Goosen and making sure that as far as possible everyone is invested in the team by getting game time. In fact it looks like only 3 players haven’t featured this season at all.
There is competition all across the squad but take a look at the wingers we now have available to us as an example
Darcy Graham
Duhan van der Merwe
Emiliano Boffelli
Wes Goosen
Damien Hoyland
Jack Blain.
Of that select few only Jack Blain hasn’t crossed the whitewash but what a list and you’d imagine that knowing these guys are your competition for a starting berth you’d have to be on your mettle. Darcy in particular appears to have thrown down the gauntlet to the rest of his fellow wingers.
The margins between a successful first segment and a poor one are very narrow. Had we lost to Cardiff we might only have dropped to 7th but won 3, lost 4 sounds so much worse than won 4, lost 3 and in that scenario the tone of this piece may have been quite different. So it’s a cautious yet optimistic thumbs up from me.
Everyone knows that past performance is no indicator for the future and obviously what I think of how the rest of the season will pan out is largely educated guesswork. With that proviso established I think that despite this being an even tougher league than it was in 2021 Edinburgh can finish in the top 4 and earn a home quarter final. We may end up on less points (57 in 2021) but I'm confident we will beat that 7th place finish.
Press me for a definitive opinion and I'd say we will be 5th.
Even John Barclay is backing us. Up to a point anyway.
If I had any concern about making that prediction it centres around the fact that after 7 games in 2021 we had lost only once. In 2021 the top 4 finishers had lost no more than 7 games at the end of the regular season. We also lost 7 games but our smaller BP total was the difference between 7th and 4th.
That's me, but what do some of my fellow Embra supporters think about how it's gone and how it might continue?
And Chris Veal sent me this as a DM-
I also conducted a poll which came out like this.
Confidence for a home quarter is pretty high but overall almost no one reckons we will fall away completely. I’ll take that and twice on Sundays.
Of course 5th probably means a trip to the RDS whereas 4th means it's a home tie and that is infinitely preferable and winnable regardless of who the opposition is.
All to play for.
I for one can’t wait for the return of the URC. If nothing else it means the wailing, gnashing of teeth and the endless Finn Russell chat will go on the back burner at least till the 6 Nations comes around.
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