Edinburgh Rugby v Benetton Treviso, 8 January

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Edinburgh Rugby v Benetton Treviso
Friday 8 January 2016
KO 19:30
BT Murrayfield

[Not currently listed as being on TV]

Referee: Gary Conway (IRFU, 20th competition game)
Assistant Referees: Mike Adamson, Stephen Hart (both SRU)
Citing Commissioner: John Kirk (SRU)

A. Head to Head

11 Played 11
7 Wins 4
4 Losses 7
0 Draws 0
265 Points 194

B. Current Form

Edinburgh Rugby
2/1/16 Glasgow 11 - 14 Edinburgh
27/12/15 Edinburgh 23 - 11 Glasgow
18/12/15 Edinburgh 18 - 15 London Irish

Benetton Treviso
3/1/16 Treviso 8 - 18 Zebre
27/12/15 Zebre 28 - 25 Treviso
19/12/15 SF Paris 40 - 14 Treviso

C. Teams

Edinburgh Rugby

15 Jack Cuthbert
14 Dougie Fife
13 Michael Allen
12 Matt Scott
11 Damien Hoyland
10 Greig Tonks
9 Sam Hidalgo-Clyne

1 Rory Sutherland
2 Neil Cochrane
3 W P Nel
4 Anton Bresler
5 Alex Toolis
6 Mike Coman (captain)
7 John Hardie
8 Cornell Du Preez

16 Stuart McInally
17 Allan Dell
18 John Andress
19 Jamie Ritchie
20 Magnus Bradbury
21 Sean Kennedy
22 Blair Kinghorn
23 Andries Strauss

Benetton Treviso

15 Luke McLean
14 Andrea Pratichetti
13 Sam Christie
12 Alberto Sgarbi
11 Simone Ragusi
10 James Ambrosini
9 Chris Smylie

8 Robert Barbieri
7 Alessandro Zanni ( C )
6 Marco Barbini
5 Jeff Montauriol
4 Filo Paulo
3 Salesi Manu
2 Roberto Santamaria
1 Matteo Zanusso

16 Ornel Gega
17 Cherif Traorè
18 Alberto De Marchi
19 Tom Palmer
20 Francesco Minto
21 Marco Lazzaroni
22 Alberto Lucchese
23 Enrico Bacchin

RDW_Scotland wrote:Scrum penalty try Edinburgh - looks like my earlier prediction may prove accurate!

Right after Treviso brought on Alberto De Marchi who is normally a loosehead at tighthead.

20 minutes to get 2 tries.

Sounds like Kinghorne has been a positive impact.

Made more difficult by us getting a yellow!

Peter Wright no happy given how many yellows Treviso have given away with no yellow.

Is Kinghorn at 10?

15

28-13 win but no BP.

Against a team that hasn't won in 22 games.

RDW_Scotland wrote:28-13 win but no BP.

Against a team that hasn't won in 22 games.

Doesn't surprise me.  Prior to tonight, Treviso had played 11, and got 7 LBP.  They may lose, but rarely by much.

demosthenes wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:28-13 win but no BP.

Against a team that hasn't won in 22 games.

Doesn't surprise me.  Prior to tonight, Treviso had played 11, and got 7 LBP.  They may lose, but rarely by much.

..

The frustrating thing is we had more than enough possession, territory and line breaks to get 4 tries or even more.

We just don't attack well!

Will be interesting to hear what FES thinks having been at the game.

I suspect it won't be positive.

Leinster have won so we're back down to 3rd.

A combination of poor options by Edinburgh,  good defence by Treviso aided and abetted by a shocking performance by Conway meant we missed the BP.

Positives front row did well barring a couple of mysterious scrum pens when the Italians were retreating at a rate of knots.  Back row did well, though not as dominant as in some games.  Backs mostly had solid games, Scott,  Allen,  Hoyland standouts for me.

Negatives,  line out poor,  maul defence poor, SHC passing as accurate as me playing darts,  Tonks meah. And did I mention Conway had a shocker let Treviso away with everything.

Overall scrappy affair which had capacity to be a lot better. Oh and Rambo looked good when he came on, busy, one great turnover and solid throws at line out - good to have him back.

Just back from the game and it wasn't a great match

Positives :
Scott -  beginning to look like his old self again with some decent carries
Hoyland - got motm scored a couple from close range
Kinghorn - looked sharp when he came on, but looked like he tweaked his hamstring so went off again

Negatives:
Scrum was a mixed bag, we really didn't dominate there. From the look of things treviso didn't engage and left nel falling flat on his face a couple of times, he looked peed off about it. Either that or he wasn't having a great game and it got to him.
Attacking game plan - we still struggle to actually open teams up.   Far too often during that game we went from side to side without engaging the opposition so they were lined up in defence. So we tried to force it and ended up getting turned over or just passed it back to treviso.
The game itself - far from a classic

The ref had an odd night, treviso had  a lot of warnings,  but it was Edinburgh who got the first yellow after very few. He then continued to warn treviso right up until the last 90 seconds when he sent two treviso players to the bin. He wasn't biased or anything like that, he just wasn't very good.

Agree with both comments above. Frustrating not to get 5 points but Treviso battled away right until the end and made it difficult. We were never in any danger of losing and yet I never felt we were going to pull away. The ref was soft on Treviso throughout but I can't put my finger on any one truly shocking decision. The yellow card for Alex Toolis didn't seem fair, particularly when the penalty try didn't render a yellow card for them.

Whole game was a bit meh. Front row were good as always, and our back row was effective. Tonks not as good as Burleigh but otherwise some nice stuff from Scott and Hoyland in particular. Kinghorn was good off the bench. Hoping he gets a start against Agen.

Final thought: good God it was cold!

Everyone'a comments aren't as scathing as I was expecting - I'm fairly livid that we didn't get the 5 points.

I don't care if they competed well and were committed in defence - this Treviso team is completely dross and short of confidence and we should have blown them away. We desperately needed 5 points.

Sounds like we showed some good attacking intent in patches but couldn't pull it together consistently. Hoyland made a few clear breaks that came to naught, as did Sutherland, Scott and Allan looked threatening but never enough to work a try etc.

We needed 5 points!!

Don't get me wrong it was a pretty poor result, it's just we were so average it was more of a relief to get the win. The set piece where we normally do so well wasn't anything to write home about and the majority of our breaks just didn't pan out. We'd get so far, run out of ideas and then pass right into their hands, Du Preez was guilty of this a couple of times. But he did set up the first try with a cracking basketball pass so tend to forgive him.

Like FES says is was bloody cold so I think most folk were numb, it's probably one of the worst atmospheres I've experienced at an Edinburgh game, and there is a lot of competition. Everyone in the group I go to games with was just glad it was over at 80 mins

Glasgow only beat that lot 13-6 in similar conditions.

Bit disappointed to read that the pack struggled to defend the maul, probably an indication that the likes of Bresler and A Toolis are getting overplayed.
Nel scrummaging has been below par since the Ulster game in November, seems to have gone back to his 2014 level which is good but nowhere near as good as 2015. Or maybe it is a case of Edinburgh badly missing Aly Dickinson on the other side of the scrum.

VinceWLB wrote:Glasgow only beat that lot 13-6 in similar conditions.

That game was played in a monsoon and a hurricane- last night was just very cold but dry and still, which is good conditions for rugby!

RDW_Scotland wrote:

VinceWLB wrote:Glasgow only beat that lot 13-6 in similar conditions.

That game was played in a monsoon and a hurricane- last night was just very cold but dry and still, which is good conditions for rugby!

Surprised that the Scotstoun pitch was even playable then!

I think it has been dry on the lead up but the heavens opened that night.

I remember it because one of my friends was there in a corporate box on a stag do and he said it was utterly miserable - he wasn't a rugby fan and I told him it should be a high scoring big win for Glasgow! I was very wrong.

Hope it didn't turn him off from Rugby altogether. You should advice him to watch an Edinburgh game instead to repay his faith in Rugby

It's a disappointing result in the sense that a team with top 4 ambitions should be getting a try bonus point against the worst team in the league, however, a win's a win and in AS's legacy wins over the Italian sides haven't been as easy as they should have been.

I think Nel and Bresler desperately need a rest - we'd have got the 4 points with Dell and maybe Coman in the SR to give Bresler and Nel a rest. Also hearing Du Preez is carrying an injury makes me feel this would have been the perfect opportunity for Bradbury to have got some Pro12 experience.

RDW_Scotland wrote:

VinceWLB wrote:Glasgow only beat that lot 13-6 in similar conditions.

That game was played in a monsoon and a hurricane- last night was just very cold but dry and still, which is good conditions for rugby!

Last night was a mix of rain and snow, I can assure you it wasn't dry