Edinburgh Rugby vs London Irish - Sat 19.35

Edinburgh Rugby v London Irish
Saturday 9th December 2017, KO 19:35
Myreside, Edinburgh
Referee: Sean Gallagher

Match Officials
Referee Sean Gallagher (Ireland)
Touch Judge 1 Mark Patton (Ireland)
Touch Judge 2 Richard Kerr (Ireland)
Citing Commissioner Jean-Etienne Bernard (France)


Edinburgh Rugby:
15 Blair Kinghorn
14 Damien Hoyland
13 Chris Dean
12 Phil Burleigh
11 Darcy Graham
10 Jaco van der Walt
9 Sam Hidalgo-Clyne
1 Darryl Marfo
2 Stuart McInally (capt)
3 Murray McCallum
4 Ben Toolis
5 Grant Gilchrist
6 Magnus Bradbury
7 Hamish Watson
8 Viliame Mata

16 Neil Cochrane
17 Rory Sutherland
18 Matt Shields
19 Lewis Carmichael
20 Jamie Ritchie
21 Sean Kennedy
22 Dougie Fife
23 Junior Rasolea

London Irish
15 Greig Tonks
14 Ben Ransom
13 Tom Fowlie
12 Johnny Wililams
11 Ben Loader
10 Thomas Bell
9 Scott Steele
1 Gordon Reid
2 Saia Fainga'a
3 Manasa Saulo
4 William Lloyd
5 Sebastian De Chaves (capt)
6 Jack Cooke
7 Max Northcote-Green
8 Lasha Lomidze

16 Tom Woolstencroft
17 Harry Elrington
18 Lovejoy Chawatama
19 Josh Basham
20 Mike Coman
21 Ben Meehan
22 Theo Brophy Clews
23 Matt Williams

Previous Meetings
Date           Home      Score   Away                 Att
14/10/17 London Irish 14 - 37 Edinburgh Rugby 4,099
18/12/15 Edinburgh Rugby 18 - 15 London Irish 3,551
12/12/15 London Irish 38 - 6 Edinburgh Rugby 3,959

Should be an interesting game with Coman & Tonks coming back to their old club. Steele against his old team mate (youth level) in SHC and Reid coming up to Scotland....this last one is pretty tenuous.

Edinburgh seemed to have picked a strong team, and there is a lot of anticipation in seeing how Graham will get on.

London Irish, seem to have picked a stronger team than in the reverse fixture, but to be fair I've not been following their results that closely so that could be total rubbish.

Both teams seem to have gone first choice.

Is Berghan injured? At least the relatively terse statement announcing Shields coming to Edinburgh from his former club suggests that he was decent for them.

3 Scots in the LI squad and a former club captain. I expect they will be keen to impress. Reid will want to show he is better than Marfo after all the plaudits. Should be a good game.

It's a fair way off a first choice team for LI Hazel ( of the starting 15 only Bell, Steele and Northcote-Green started the Gloucester game last week), although is slightly stronger than the team that played the home game against Edinburgh, with a better front row and Bell involved. 4 teenagers involved in the 23 as well including an 18 year old lock on the bench.

That said, a similar team went over to Paris and did well, so we'll see. Hoping it's a good game, but you guys should have too much on the day.

Strong Edinburgh front 5 with McCallum getting a rare start - he's done quite well whenever he's come off the bench.

All the focus will be on Graham though who is utterly electric, but also a midget. One game won't define his career of course but I hope he gets off to a great start. It is utterly Baltic in Edinburgh so hopefully he gets a lot of ball or he might turn hypothermic!

Graham will be playing opposite another small nippy lad in Ransom, so it should be a fair fight.

Surprised this is a night game, given it's not been shifted there for TV

I assume this game isn't being shown on TV. Apart from a couple of Thursday night, oh sh!t we have nothing better to show games, has anything been televised

Game has been switched to Murrayfield due to worries about the state of the pitch. Both sides want to get the game played.

Glad they were at least prepared for it and remembered to put the Murrayfield heating on!

It is going to be bitterly cold at Murrayfield - can't imagine there'll be much of a crowd so shame it's not at myreside

Another McInally rolling maul try - he's scored plenty of those this season!

Edinburgh lose Sutherland to the bin after several LI scrums on the line but Edinburgh hold on and end up scoring at the other end of the pitch! 12-3

Ta for the commentary :-)
Keep it coming please

Couple of quick fire  tries from Burleigh in response to a LI try makes it 26-10

Following on twitter, it sounds like an entertaining game! Edinburgh leading 26-10 now after 2 Burleigh tries in quick succession

26-10 HT Edinburgh 4 tries

To be fair it is a near full strength Edinburgh team against a youthful LI - we should be expecting a big win!

SHC scores our 5th try and his 5th in 3 matches!

Rasolea scores to make it 43-15 and a bit of a pumping

Somehow missed a Darcy Graham try earlier - scoring with an incredible finish in the corner apparently

Try at the death to make it a healthy and neat scoreline satisfying 50-20!

Decent game with some truly comical moments from LI. Twice in the in goal area they had time and opportunities to clear the ball and instead messed up allowing Edinburgh to score.

Sutherland's yellow was a total joke. The tighthead was clearly binding on the arm and driving at angle, did it several times and Edinburgh were penalised. It wasn't even subtle.

The whole team did well, and what a difference having a 10 who is capable of changing play makes. Some very clever kicks through and great link up play with Dean and Burleigh.

Graham was obviously a big focus pre match, but didn't really see much of the ball due to opportunities through the middle being taken. Hoyland looked like a man determined to stay in the team came looking for work and constantly made yards.

Shields got a run out and he's a big lad. Seemed capable enough.

EWT Spoons wrote:Decent game with some truly comical moments from LI. Twice in the in goal area they had time and opportunities to clear the ball and instead messed up allowing Edinburgh to score.

Sutherland's yellow was a total joke. The tighthead was clearly binding on the arm and driving at angle, did it several times and Edinburgh were penalised. It wasn't even subtle.

The whole team did well, and what a difference having a 10 who is capable of changing play makes. Some very clever kicks through and great link up play with Dean and Burleigh.

Graham was obviously a big focus pre match, but didn't really see much of the ball due to opportunities through the middle being taken. Hoyland looked like a man determined to stay in the team came looking for work and constantly made yards.

Shields got a run out and he's a big lad. Seemed capable enough.

Very pleasing to here VDV put in a decent performance - still early days but think what this team could do with proper direction at 10 for once! SHC sounds like he's determined to keep his place too.

That's exactly what we need - players playing like their place in the team depends on it!

How did Sutherland get on? Is he starting to come into form? SHC is scoring for fun so assume he is picking up form now he realises he may be 5th/6th choice if he does not.

On the LI side, other than Tonks's mess up, how did the Scots get on?

Edinburgh game. Tries

Still love kennedy's try. Junior & Sam's are missing but still decent highlights