Pro 12 Round 7 Edinburgh (the numpties) vs. Scarlets Murrayfield Friday 26th Oct KO 19h35

“The PRO12 is really tight just now. All but the top and bottom teams are on two, three or four wins, so success can shoot you up the table very quickly. But we need to strike now.

“We know we have a lot of talent in our side and we know we’re a good rugby team, but we haven’t been able show it, so the key this week has been to focus on ourselves, and what we can control.”

Edinburgh
15 Greig Tonks
14 Lee Jones
13 Matt Scott
12 Nick De Luca
11 Tim Visser
10 Harry Leonard
9 Chris Leck

1 John Yapp
2 Andy Titterrell
3 Willem Nel
4 Grant Gilchrist
5 Sean Cox CAPTAIN
6 David Denton
7 Ross Rennie
8 Stuart McInally

Substitutes
16 Ross Ford
17 Robin Hislop
18 Lewis Niven
19 Robert McAlpine
20 Roddy Grant
21 Richie Rees
22 John Houston
23 Tom Brown

Bradley's biggest task is to rebuild confidence at Edinburgh
Kevin Ferrie

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/rugby/bradleys-biggest-task-is-to-rebuild-confidence-at-edinburgh.19248356

In the last couple of weeks, Michael Bradley has faced a huge challenge to get the balance right between an apparent willingness to acknowledge failings publicly and the need to avoid being interpreted by his team as kicking them when they are down.

In the last couple of weeks, Michael Bradley has faced a huge challenge to get the balance right between an apparent willingness to acknowledge failings publicly and the need to avoid being interpreted by his team as kicking them when they are down.

Edinburgh's head coach must have been shocked by the nature of his Heineken Cup semi-finalists' five-match losing run, culminating in a new low when they became the first side to fail to register a score in either of their first two Heineken Cup pool matches. However, he has also spoken about the damage done to the confidence of a group of players he believes in and he knows are unlikely to be boosted by reading savage criticism from their boss.

Coming as he does from Munster, where rugby is taken very seriously, while working in a Scottish sporting environment in which the likes of Craig Levein and Ally McCoist have been savaged in recent times, Bradley perhaps understands better than most what is demanded of those engaged in professional sport.

Consequently, the mature way he is dealing with the serious questions that are quite rightly being asked is refreshing compared with the reaction of more sensitive souls at Murrayfield, past and present, who seek to treat media criticism as a personal matter rather than recognise their wider responsibilities.

"For sure our fans will be hurting and will be upset and we mentioned that during the week, as well as that we need to win and they need to see us winning. That's all we can do at this stage," he said.

In saying so, he is able to offer, without reference to notes, an analytical breakdown of this demoralising sequence of results and, for the most part, his conclusion is that Edinburgh's systems are sound and that they are doing much of what they must to win matches but are letting themselves down with individual errors.

"The question you're quite legitimately asking is why aren't the results closer or why aren't you scoring etc," he said, with particular reference to the Heineken Cup defeats. The answer to that is we let them out in terms of pressure, we took our foot off the gas in terms of giving them easy outs, and they got momentum against us and we weren't able to cope with it. That didn't happen last year and we are aware of that and we need to make that adjustment.

"It is important that this message is heard, that against Munster, six nil at half-time in Thomond Park when both sides are desperate for a win is a good performance. The boys fought very well but then in the last 10 minutes we let ourselves down as we did in the Sarries game."

Nothing can be done about that now, though, and so the task is to look forward and encourage supporters to keep faith with a squad that has been substantially strengthened since its ground-breaking European run.

"Our confidence has taken a bit of a dent," Bradley admitted once again. "You don't associate zeros on the board with Edinburgh Rugby, it just doesn't happen, yet we've had two of those in the past two weeks. The scoreline hurts us in both ways, but we have to restart the processes. Scarlets have lost both Heineken Cup matches but they've got bonus and were more competitive than we were.

"We've a quarter of the season gone, bear with us. We're a stronger squad than we were last year. We understand that we've let the supporters down and I think there's a strong determination within the group to put that right. I believe that the talent is there and that we will show the best of Edinburgh Rugby in the forthcoming weeks.

"We want to be at the business end of competitions at the end of the season. We've made it very difficult in the Heineken Cup, but we've back to back games against Racing coming up and we beat them twice last year. If we manage to do it again this year then we'll be having different conversations.

"The bread and butter is the Rabo, as it was this time last year, and we have to go and produce some performances and get ourselves up towards the top of that table."

21st Century Schizoid Man wrote:Ah-em ! Trainspotting Old Boy ! Appreciate they had to get a Glasgow actor and West End good guy to play the Embra Psycho, but still written by an East Coaster and that is enough for me !!!


Anyway to continue - a stag doo in Auld Reekie then a visit to the library on a cold Friday when they are the second worst pro team in the NH - boy those Welsh lads know how to party hard !

SubsBench wrote:

The away game against Glasgow wasn't on a suitable date. Thank God.

RDW_Scotland wrote:Good for us that Jon Davies is out- I think he's a fantastic player and underrated by many.

Manky-Flanker wrote:surely North was in front of Stoddart there