Edinburgh ready to face 'Ireland' and Jacques Nienaber
Edinburgh have placed their hopes of some silverware on Europe’s premier competition, the Champions Cup.
The Stormers cemented their place in the top two of the United Rugby Championship with a 33-14 bonus point victory over Edinburgh in Cape Town at the weekend.
In front of the league’s biggest crowd of the weekend, 21,487, the Stormers pulled away in the final quarter to leave their Scottish opponents effectively out of the play-off running.
The URC is now on a two-week break, as the focus switches to the knock-out stages of the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup.
All but two of the URC teams are involved in next weekend’s last 16 matches in the two competitions, with a number of them facing each other.
You’ve got Glasgow versus the Bulls and Leinster at home to Edinburgh in the Champions Cup, while it’s Connacht against the Sharks, Benetton versus Cardiff and Ospreys facing Ulster in the Challenge Cup.
The following week sees the quarterfinals, and then it’s back to URC action with Round 15 on the weekend of April 17 and 18.
Edinburgh coach Sean Everitt accepted that his team’s hopes of reaching the URC play-offs are now almost certainly over, sitting 13th on the standings, 17 points off the top eight and with just four rounds remaining.
As a consequence, they will need to win next Sunday’s Champions Cup last-16 tie against Leinster in Dublin to get some reward from this season.
However, they need to be much better than they were in Cape Town, and have the added challenge of a World Cup-winning coach in the Leinster camp.
“Your set piece needs to function to win games, and I thought we did for 60 minutes,” Everitt said.
“We always knew that the Stormers had a strong bench, and unfortunately, they got the better of us at set-piece times.
“That’s obviously where it went wrong in the last 15 minutes for us.
“But [I am ] proud of the effort that the guys put in, how they bounced back from last week.
“We did have some good counter-attack moments as well, but you’ve got to be able to win that aerial battle. I think they won that tonight [Saturday], and that’s why they won the game.”
He admitted that their focus is now on the Champions Cup.
“We’ve got to understand that the chances of qualifying [for the URC play-offs] now are probably gone,” Everitt said.
“It’s tough, because it was one of our goals to achieve top eight and play in the Champions Cup again.
“We have a lot of work to do with the youngsters who are coming through.
“We are fighters, and we will play the best we can.”
* (WATCH as Edinburgh coach Sean Everitt explains what his plans are, now that they are effectively out of the URC running…..)
Injuries have already forced them to blood more youngsters than they would have liked, but in next Sunday’s Champions Cup last-16 tie at Leinster and the four remaining URC league matches, they will continue to fight.
“We know that next week we’re probably playing Ireland, because they [Leinster] will have all their players back.
“One thing we have as well is international-quality players, and you saw that tonight [Saturday].
“I thought Ewan Ashman was outstanding at hooker, and Pierre [Schoeman] did really well, as well as Boan Venter.”
The other big challenge they will face in Dublin is the ‘aggressive line speed’ on defence, being implemented by World Cup-winning former Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber.
“The Stormers [at the weekend] were good training for us, because they do the same,” Everitt said.
“We’re definitely not going to throw away this season.
“We want to build on certain aspects of our game and improve in some areas.
“That doesn’t mean we are going to change the selection policy. We will do our best we can for our city, and that is what counts.”
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