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'There is a perception about Edinburgh that the team has a soft underbelly'
By Simon Thomas
Edinburgh coach Sean Everitt said he was proud of the way his players bounced back from the heavy loss to the Lions to beat the Stormers 38-7.
They were thumped 55-21 in Johannesburg last week after trailing by a league record margin of 48-0 at half-time.
Everitt revealed his players had taken the criticism aimed at them following that game personally, while he admitted it hadn’t been an easy week for him.
But he was a happy man following the five-try bonus point victory over the side from Cape Town.
“There is a perception about Edinburgh Rugby that the team has a soft underbelly,” said the South African.
“The character of the team was questioned last week, the work-rate, the effort and the passion.
“The guys took those comments personally and certainly bounced back with vigour. I am sure they made the supporters proud.”
As for the flak that was fired in his direction after the Lions game, he said: “It comes with the territory. For me, it was about taking responsibility for our actions last week, leading the way forward and getting the team up to put in a good performance.
“It wasn’t easy for me personally, but I enjoy the challenge, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this job.
“I am really proud of how the guys responded. I am a happy man.
“Had we lost again, then you suddenly start doubting what you are doing. We can take confidence out of the fact that when we manage the game properly, we perform well. It was a great victory and good for the team.
“The first three weeks have been tough for us, so hats off to the leadership group for pulling it together and getting the guys back on track. I am very happy to get the win. It was a really good performance.”
Skipper Grant Gilchrist said: “A lot of questions were asked of us after last week and rightly so. It wasn’t acceptable.
“Every time we wear this jersey, we wear it with pride, we didn’t do that last week. Our character was questioned. We had to show who we are as people and what this club stands for.
“For our fans who stuck with us and supported us, all I can say is thank you. They showed a lot of faith in us, turning out in their numbers and cheering us on. I hope they went home happy.
“We build from here, our season starts here.”
The Player of the Match award went to two-try flanker Ben Muncaster, who said: “We needed that after three losses in a row. Actions speak louder than words and I think we did that.”
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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