A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma is a phrase attributed to Winston Churchill. It could easily be used to describe the reasons behind the failure of Edinburgh Rugby’s 2023-2024 league campaign.
And let’s be honest here, it is failure. Trying to dress it up as progress due to winning more games than we did in a season that led to our coach resigning is nothing more than happy clappy nonsense.
I really can’t tell you why it went wrong. Some will point to the attack, some to the defence. Others will say that it is the attitude or the culture at the club. It could be the coaching but we’ve now had failures from Richard Cockerill, Mike Blair and Sean Everitt. Three very different men. Blair and Cockerill had some limited success but failed to capitalise on it.
I’m not sure if even those on the inside know where or why we are going wrong repeatedly.
Here’s a crazy suggestion though. Ask some people who have been at clubs where they’ve actually won things what has worked or is working at those clubs. Sam Skinner has both league and European Cup Medals. Blair Kinghorn, remember him? Toulouse certainly seem to be getting things right. Our new tighthead, Paul Hill has pretty recent experience of playing for a team that knows how to succeed.
Let's take a look at how the season unfolded. In terms of the league I've split it into 3 sections. We’ll take a brief look at how the games went in each section, highlight some stats of relevance, and try to gauge what our trajectory was in that bit of the season.
The first bit
The repeated phrase in the first six games was that Edinburgh were winning games that they would previously have lost. This was true in that 3 of the games we won we had lost to the opposition in our immediate previous encounter.
There were wins against Lions, Connacht and Bulls in that category as well as an opening day win against Dragons.
Our first loss of the season was to Leinster in Ireland and despite it being quite clearly a Leinster 2nd XV v an Edinburgh team that had at least 12 internationals we left empty handed. We kept the game scoreless up to the 20th minute but Leinster then scored 33 points between then and the 58th minute. After that the last 20 minutes was all Edinburgh and we made a fight of it but ultimately it was a futile effort.
The other narrative that featured in these early games was ‘playing for 80 minutes’ and there was some evidence of that. Against Dragons we were 14-0 down after 17 minutes and victory was only secured in the last 10 minutes. Against the Lions the following week we were under extreme pressure in both territory and possession in the second half but managed to keep our noses in front in the last part of the game.
The game against Connacht was won at the death by Healy’s drop goal and as an aside having watched that back a number of times now it’s pretty clear that in the heat of battle the players were unaware of the advantage that was being played at that point.
The 80 minute thing however fell apart dramatically against Benetton who dominated the 2nd half of our match at ERS. We had 38% territory in that half and yet could still have won. I still feel Healy should have had a shot at goal on 67 minutes. The penalty was on the 15 metre line so although not straightforward if he’d got it we would have been 8 points ahead. Instead we messed up the lineout and Benetton managed to make their way upfield and took the lead and the game.
Despite this game being a disappointment 4 from 6 still seemed like a decent start to the season. In this early section a couple of standouts were Connor Boyle who had been top tackler for Edinburgh on 3 occasions, a try scorer v Leinster and Man of the Match against Bulls. Six appearances - 3 off the bench and 3 as a starter and after this he only made the starting 23 five times in the remainder of the season some of which was partly due to injury.
The other person who stood out and then disappeared for an entirely different reason was Blair Kinghorn. After 6 games only Ewan Ashman had more tries. BK had topped the charts for defenders beaten in three out of the five games he’d featured and in the other 2 was 2nd top. As a full back you’d be expected to top the metres made and he did that on 4 occasions. His presence was a big part of why we got some of these results.
Sean Everitt was asked about Blairs transfer before the Benetton game and after spending some time lamenting what Edinburgh were going to lose somewhat cryptically added that the transfer had to suit 3 parties, ‘the player, the team, and Scottish Rugby’. It certainly didn’t suit the team.
Edinburgh scored 16 tries in these 6 matches. The pick of the bunch was the opening try against Connacht scored by Wes Goosen. The ball went through seven pairs of hands and was a peach. You can see it in the highlights below.
https://youtu.be/pwkwL7rzPXg?si=r3wQ1J237WiwOeAY
Part 2
Edinburgh made amends for that disappointing defeat to Benetton by winning against Ulster in Belfast. It was our first win against the province since 2018 and it was against an Ulster side that went into the game on the same points as Edinburgh after the opening 6 games. It wasn’t a hugely expansive match with all 3 Edinburgh tries coming from short range drives albeit Vellacott’s score was very clever thinking as he spotted a 1cm x 1cm square of unattended ground to dot the ball down in.
Some of the shine got tarnished though. With the clock in the red Edinburgh had a lineout in their own half, threw it to the back but it was squint. Ulster were awarded a scrum and scored a last second try which gave them 2 bonus points. More on that later. It was, however, an historic win.
If that win v Ulster was one of the high points then the first leg of the 1872 cup v Glasgow was definitely a low one. In the pouring rain at Scotstoun it was a frustrating defeat. We were never more than a score behind until the 73rd minute and even held the lead for the third quarter but at no point did it feel like we were in control of the game. However it was here that lack of a coherent attack in our back line started to become apparent as our centres had 12 carries in the entire match between them.
The return leg was a different beast. A player of the match performance from our big game hunter Duhan as well as from other contenders for that accolade such as Ben Healy and Darcy Graham meant we took some revenge for the previous week's defeat. Unfortunately the margin wasn’t enough to reclaim the 1872 cup itself.
Both Duhan and Ben Healy made more metres in this game than they did in any other for Edinburgh in the entire season. 162 and 52 respectively. Their averages over the course of the campaign being 65 and 10.
This was match 9 so it was the halfway mark. This was where the balance was in terms of where our tries came in each half of the season. It perhaps tells a story.
The league then went on a bit of a break before the next two games which were Zebre away in Mid February and Ospreys at home at the beginning of March. With the 6 Nations underway Edinburgh’s selections for both games were affected to a degree but nevertheless we won both games narrowly.
In what was a poor spectacle Zebre took an early lead which Edinburgh only managed to overhaul in the 67th minute. A short range drive, a penalty try(our only one all season) and a maul drive secured the win. Perhaps chasing a 4th try in the closing minutes we turned over possession and instead it was Zebre that secured a losing bonus point.
Ospreys, on the back of a 5 game winning streak were up next in a home game for Edinburgh. Our only try of the night came in the 17th minute. A lineout on the halfway line went off the top to Hamish Watson who fed Mata running a hard line. He broke through a couple of would-be tacklers before feeding Matt Currie who carried to within a couple of metres of the Ospreys line before offloading dramatically to Watson who finished the move off. Three Ben Healy penalties followed and despite Ospreys crossing the Edinburgh line twice a further Healy penalty in the 73rd minute ensured we kept our nose just in front.
So we set off for South Africa in a good place. We were 4th in the league at this point and despite missing a few internationals who were being rested at the end of the 6N it was a pretty strong side that lined up. We lost Boff in the warm up though and were then dismantled comprehensively by a ruthless Stormers side who literally hit Edinburgh for 7 (tries) and the most points we conceded all season - 43. The only bright thing on the day was a positive debut and try for Jake Henry. Stormers remain the only SA side we haven’t beaten.
Two thirds of the way there and we were 6th. The lack of bonus points was beginning to be commented on fairly regularly but forget the points we didn’t take and consider the ones we gave away. In the first 12 games we had won 8 games and in 7 of those we conceded 7 LBPs and a TBP.
With Lions and Ospreys being two of those teams even denying them LBP’s would have meant us finishing 8th at the season's end and that's before you start counting the extras we didn’t take.
The best try of that middle section was almost undeniably Watsons one against Ospreys with an honourable mention going to van der Merwe for his pitch length effort against Glasgow.
https://youtu.be/nMzQsJj_KJ8?si=OIVGxOG-fU8w5LId
Edinburgh players were given the P.O.M. awards in the 4 games we won in this period. 3 of the 4 awards went to forwards. Another hint of the way we were playing.
The last bit
The South African trip continued in the same vein as Edinburgh got another rugby lesson. This time it was Sharks that were providing the ‘learnings’. Like against the Stormers we were behind the entire game and only a last minute Boan Venter try prevented a ‘granny’. So after the mini tour we had dropped to 9th.
The last 5 games were described by all observers as being cup finals if Edinburgh were to make the playoffs. They kicked off in the best possible fashion with only our second five-pointer of the season against Scarlets at ERS.
Although It ended up as Edinburgh’s biggest winning score of the season, Scarlets were right in it until Matt Currie’s score in the 60th minute put a lock on it. We then scored a further 3 tries in the remaining 20 minutes. Six tries in total and a 36-3 scoreline in Edinburgh's favour in the second half.
We travelled to Cardiff for the next game and again it was tight in the first half. We turned around 0-7 ahead but Cardiff levelled the match on 44 minutes. That was their lot however and a further two forward powered tries meant we left with the 4 points. This win also meant we completed a clean sweep against the Welsh regions this season.
Zebre were up next and a six try victory ensued. A brace from eventual man of the match Ewan Ashman kicked us off before WP Nel scored his 25th and last try for the club. His try securing his 9th place in the all time try scoring list and the top forward in the list for a wee while at least.
Two games remained and we were still very much in the hunt despite seemingly operating at less than optimum efficiency and for our remaining home game against reigning champions Munster we turned up and played with an intensity hitherto unseen in Edinburgh this season. It almost got us over the line but a combination of the inaccuracies that haunted our entire season, Munster’s nous both fair and foul, and some poor refereeing meant all we got from the game was a losing bonus point.
And then Benetton. What can I say? In my column for the BBC after the Munster game I mentioned how we had stayed in the fight and how that fight would be needed against the Italians. Well it was nonexistent against them.
It was always going to be a difficult one. We haven’t won there since 2017 and when the team was announced our backline looked pretty makeshift as a result of injury. However the 5-0 try count and our biggest ever losing margin against Benetton was not what was expected. It was categorically the worst we’d played all season.
I’m going with Goosen’s solo effort v Scarlets as the best try of this section. Duhan’s score in the same game was also worthy of consideration.
https://youtu.be/zZaozxrfDcs?si=I8WyNyVxWHAofRsB
Conclusion
And that is that. I watched all of these matches back in order to write this piece and once the nightmares and the shakes subsided I put my thoughts in the column for your illumination. I know I said I can’t tell you what went wrong but what did jump out at me was this-
Despite the disrupted start to the season we looked more like a cohesive entity in the early stages and it was as the season progressed that we became unbalanced and seemingly reliant on forward power and kicking.
Here's a couple of stats that bear that opinion out. In the first half of the season Ben Healy ran with the ball for 190 metres. In the second half he ran for a mere 53. Even as a team we ran 478 less metres in the second half of the season.
In the 7 games we lost only against Glasgow and Leinster did the opposition forwards contribute more tries to our defeat. In the other 5 games it was backs that did the majority of the damage.
Add the stat in part 2 above about where our tries came from as the season progressed and it becomes fairly apparent that as opposed to not improving our strategies as the season progressed we actually became more one-dimensional.
Being one dimensional isn’t inherently bad if you are efficient but when you consider that this season was the first since the advent of the URC that we have a negative try scoring balance and the least number of points we’ve scored in a season it’s clear that we haven’t been.
It cannot be denied that we had repeated and lengthy back 3 injuries to contend with but every team has injuries and whilst I can accept that will have had an impact the fact is we fell away when the going got tough. Falling away does appear to be an Edinburgh trait. In 23 seasons as a professional Rugby team we have lost our last game of the season 17 times. In more than half of that number we’ve lost the last two games or more of the season.
As I write Glasgow have won the URC. Good for them. I hope the banter between them and their Edinburgh compatriots on the Scotland summer tour quietly sinks in so that when they return the Edinburgh lads are fired up to do better.
We’ve got an easy start to kick us off.
Leinster - home - not won since 2019
Bulls - away - never beaten them in SA
Lions - away - never beaten them in SA
Stormers - home - never beat them.
If we get past this crowd with anything above 10 points on the board then a corner will have been turned.
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