Soft underbelly remains
Let’s take stock on the Leinster players who weren’t playing on Friday night. Hugo Keenan, Robbie Henshaw, James Lowe, Ciaran Frawley, Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Ronan Kelleher, Tadhg Furlong, Joe McCarthy, RG Snyman, Caelan Doris, Ryan Baird and Josh van der Flier.
And yet the province came to Edinburgh, scored five tries against Edinburgh’s first-string and won. Edinburgh’s softness, as much as Leinster’s power and guile, allowed them score three times in 10 second-half minutes. That was 21 unanswered points.
Good teams are built on defence and Edinburgh have a massive amount of work to do. This, despite the bonus points, was a pretty disappointing night for them.
Bonus point improvement
In all of last season’s URC, Edinburgh only landed five bonus points. That’s five in 18 games.
Putting it into context, Zebre – who finished bottom of the league with just one win – recorded nine bonus points.
So the two Edinburgh got against Leinster represented a significant step up. Bonus points are massive in this competition.
A couple more bonuses last season would have seen Edinburgh qualify for the play-offs. At least they salvaged something from their night.
Edinburgh can play, but…
Sean Everitt’s team scored five tries off 39% territory and 48% possession. That’s a healthy strike-rate following on from last season’s debacle.
Edinburgh ranked 12th for tries scored last season. A largely plodding midfield and injury to Darcy Graham didn’t help, but they were very poor creatively.
The five tries they got against Leinster shows they have plenty of firepower. The thing continuing to hurt them is their inability to turn the screw when ahead.
That weakness is what’s hurting them – be it the lack of a clever kicking game, losing the aerial battle, a ropey lineout, a defensive line that’s sometimes too slow to get set, or a combination of all of those things.
There’s a lot of good in this team, but too much that’s bad. To South Africa now for a double-header. Gulp.
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