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'I will take responsibility for my personal errors... I dropped a few balls'
By PA
Edinburgh forward Nick Haining admitted his side’s error-strewn display against Ospreys was unacceptable.
Richard Cockerill’s men led early on from a penalty try after a good break down the left but Grant Gilchrist soon followed visiting skipper Justin Tipuric into the sin bin and Ospreys went on to win 25-10.
Edinburgh spilled high balls in the torrential rain, Jaco Van Der Walt missed two first-half penalties and the home side failed to make any inroads whatsoever into the Welsh outfit’s 22 during a second half in which they failed to score any points.
It was a fourth consecutive defeat and Haining insists they were not moping over their disappointing finale to last season when they threw away a semi-final lead over Ulster and then lost in Europe to Bordeaux.
“We can’t make those excuses,” the number eight said. “We are into a new season now, we had the week off, and we put that behind us. We should be hitting the ground running.
“To lose like that, with that many errors, wasn’t good enough. We won’t make any excuses.
“It would have been nice to have a bigger break but it’s the way it is, everybody is in the same boat.
“We had a good pre-season, we had our finals, we had a week off, and there’s no excuses really, we should have been better.
“I will take responsibility for my personal errors. We have made errors in the game that cost us.
“Me personally, I dropped a few balls, we were under pressure in our own half and not exiting.
“We made that many errors, it’s hard to get a foothold in the game. We talked about it after the game and that’s where we let ourselves down.”
Cockerill was already missing several key players such as Jamie Ritchie and Duhan Van Der Merwe and his plans were further disrupted by early injuries to Luke Crosbie (hamstring) and Magnus Bradbury (head).
“It does not help that two of the back-row guys go off early,” Cockerill said.
“The weather conditions were difficult and they controlled them much better than we did.
“We were a bit naive and did not exit out of our own half and put ourselves under pressure.
“There were a couple of missed touches, missed penalties and other parts of it. They controlled the game better. We were not very composed.
“Once they got the lead they stuck the ball at the right end of the field and made us play. We did not have the nous to put them under pressure.”
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Mallia deserves 8 at least. Brains and skills for the comeback. Him, Garcia and Albornoz the core of The Pumas attack. Hope to see them in the 15s against France
Go to commentsYeah nar I pretty much agree with that sentiment, wasn't just about the lineout though.
Yeah, I think it's the future of SR, even TRC. Graham above just now posting about how good a night it was with a dbl header of ENGvSA and NZvFrance, and now I don't want to kick SA or Argentina out of TRC but it would be great if in this next of the woods 2 more top teams could come in to create more of these sort of nights (for rugby's appeal). Often Arg and SA and both travel here and you get those games but more often doesn't work out right.
Obviously a long way off but USA and Japan are the obvious two. First thing we need to do is get Eddie Jones kicked out of Japan so they can start improving again and then get a couple of US teams in SRP (even if one its just a US based and augmented Jaguares).
It will start off the whole conferences are crap debate again (which I will continue to argue vehemently against), but imagine a 6 team Pacific conference, Tokyo Sunwolves (drafted from Tokyo JRLO teams), Tokyo All Stars (made up of best remaining foreign players and overseas drafts), ALL Nihon (best of local non Tokyo based talent, inc China/Korea etc, with mainland Japan), a could of West Coast american franchises and perhaps a second self PI driven Hawai'i based team, or Jagaures. So I see a short NFL like 3 or 4 month comp as fitting best, maybe not even a full round, NZvAUSvPAC, all games taking place within a 6hr window. Model for NZ will definitely still require a competitive and funded NPC!
On the Crusaders, I liked last years ending with Grace on the bench (ovbiously form dependent but thats how it ended) and Lio-Willie at 8. I could have Blackadder trying to be a 7 but think balance will be used with him at 6 and Kellow as 7. Scott Barrett is an international 6 sized player. It is just NZ style/model that pushes him into the tight, I reckon he'd be a great loose player, and saders have Strange and Cahill as bigger players (plus that change could draw someone like Darry back). Same with Haig now, hes not grown yet but Barrett hight and been playing 6, now that the Highlanders have only chosen two locks he'll be playing lock, and that is going to change his growth trajectory massively, rather than seeing him grow like an International 6.
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