WHEN Edinburgh won a penalty deep in their own 22 on Friday night, right on 80 minutes so no time to kick for touch and go again, and needing a try to beat the Dragons and avoid a 10th consecutive defeat, most of us shook our heads sagely.
No, no, no, we thought as they prepared to tap and go. The All Blacks might be able to traverse the length of the field in the final play of a game and claim a match-winning score, as they so memorably did against Ireland at the end of 2013, but this was Edinburgh. Accident-prone, error-ridden Edinburgh.
It therefore came as a delightful surprise when, two or three minutes later, and after dozens of phases of play in which not a single ball was dropped, Grant Gilchrist scored. The conversion which produced a final score of 24-20 was just the icing on the cake: Edinburgh had won in the PRO12 for the first time this year.
The fact that it was just the first victory in 10 outings tempered the celebrations a bit, as did the quality of the opposition. Nevertheless, it was one of the most genuinely happy moments of the season for anyone who has witnessed the team’s difficulties during what has been a dreary and demoralising campaign, and the result has cast this weekend’s 1872 Cup clash at Scotstoun in a far more appealing light from an Edinburgh perspective. They will not be favourites for the match against Glasgow, and they will certainly be long shots for the trophy, given they go into the game with a 13-point deficit from the first leg at Murrayfield back on Boxing Day. But they can now be relied upon to give it their best shot, free from at least some of the self-doubt that has afflicted them so badly in recent months.
The Warriors, too, can go into the game with nothing to lose, and with the motivation of giving Gregor Townsend a good send-off before he leaves to become Scotland coach, with current Glasgow assistant Mike Blair also expected to join him at Murrayfield. And, with the squad for the summer tour due to be announced early next week, both sets of players will regard the match as a last opportunity to claim a place.
Yet no matter what excitement there is in the game itself, the occasion will still be a sober, understated end to the pro teams’ season. It is the first time in six years that the Warriors’ fixtures will end like this rather in the play-offs, and it is seriously underwhelming that our two sides in the competition should finish sixth and ninth.
The Six Nations Championship ended with Scotland having made a clear improvement on the previous year, not only because they won three games as opposed to two, but also because they have now successfully developed an entertaining and effective attacking game. The same, alas, cannot be said of the PRO12 for Glasgow or Edinburgh.
In the event, it was good going for the Warriors to keep their play-off hopes alive up until the second-last round of fixtures, while away from the league this will be remembered as the season when they finally got into the quarter-finals in Europe. But not getting into the top four can only be deemed a failure.
As for Edinburgh, they did not even come close to their modest aim of contending for a place in the top six. That spells failure too, in a big way.
What will represent progress for the Warriors next season under Dave Rennie? Getting back into the top four, of course.
And Edinburgh? Anything better than ninth will be a move in the right direction, but perhaps the first sign of sustained progress will be when they stop relying on glorious last-gasp tries to get the better of teams such as the Dragons, and instead dispatch them methodically and mercilessly well before the end.
And another thing . . . . .
IN English football, the play-off for a place in the Premier League is a very big deal worth an estimated £170million. In Scottish football it’s a more modest affair, but still a keenly awaited occasion. In Scottish rugby?
Well, Saturday’s match was a big deal for Hawick, second-bottom of the Premiership, and Edinburgh Accies, runners-up in the Championship. It was a good game, too, with a dramatic ending, as the Borders team won it 23-20 to hold on to their place in the top flight.
But was it a big deal for the Scottish Rugby Union? Not if you judge from their website, where the only stories highlighted from the weekend are the Glasgow and Edinburgh league games and the Girls’ Club Cup matches. Nor if you go by the SRU’s media guide sent out weekly to the press: for Saturday past, that listed four girls’ games and nothing else.
SRU President Rob Flockhart was at the game at Lasswade, so it did not go entirely without formal recognition. Even so, this was a big event in club rugby; one that with a bit of promotion could easily have attracted a larger crowd. It should not be beyond the capacity of the national governing body to provide that promotion. Let’s hope for better next season.
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