Edinburgh captain Grant Gilchrist was left “devastated” that his side’s capitulation against Benetton called time early on the careers of legends WP Nel and Bill Mata in the capital.
Nel and Mata will depart this summer after a combined 20 seasons and 343 appearances for the club, with the veteran prop retiring and the Fijian number eight heading to Bristol Bears.
Both were named in the starting line-up as Edinburgh travelled to Italy in search of a victory that would have ensured a place in the URC playoffs and Champions Cup qualification.
Instead, they were on the receiving end of a 31-6 thrashing that saw Edinburgh tumble out of the playoff places altogether and prematurely ended the duo’s capital careers.
“It’s hard speaking about it. I’m devastated that this is their last experience in an Edinburgh jersey, they deserved much better than today,” Gilchrist said.
“All I can say is thanks for what they’ve given the club, they are both absolute legends who will be spoken about forever when someone speaks about Edinburgh Rugby.
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“It’s really tough that this is their last game. They deserve so much better than this.”
Ahead of the trip to Italy, Edinburgh head coach Sean Everitt described the game as a “cup final.”
Gilchrist was uncompromising before the game, saying the result would signify “success or failure” for the entire season.
He didn’t back down in his post-match assessment after other results saw Edinburgh slide down the standings to finish in 10th place.
“We set a goal to be in the top eight at the start of the season and we’re not there. We have to take that on the chin as a failure,” Gilchrist said.
“There have definitely been good foundations put in place. We’ve shown over the course of this year that we’re more than capable of being a top eight team, but we weren’t able to do it consistently.
“I think it’s a step forward but we said we were going to make the top eight and we didn’t achieve that, so in my eyes it’s a failure and we have to address it.”
Edinburgh finished their first season under Everitt with 11 wins, five more than they achieved a year earlier, while finishing two places higher than in 2022/23.
However, their struggle to accumulate bonus points - from a losing margin of seven points or fewer or by scoring four tries or more – cost them in the standings and underlined the season-long struggle to get the attack to click.
Gilchrist believes he saw enough in the former Sharks boss’s debut campaign to be optimistic about what lies ahead.
“You can see over the course of the season the improvements we’ve made, the number of games we’ve won,” said the Scotland lock.
“We’ve actually been frustrated that we could’ve been a lot better in a lot of those games.
“I think there is enough in there to show that if this is our baseline and we add on a pre-season where we work really hard at our game, we get a few guys fit and ready to go, we can take that step next season. But we need to be better.”
One area the 33-year-old believes Edinburgh must improve is their accuracy, something that was abundantly clear at the Stadio Monigo.
Individual errors plagued Edinburgh’s performance as they struggled to threaten in attack and had to soak up Benetton pressure before wilting in the final quarter by conceding three tries to surrender the contest.
“We made too many errors,” he said. “We gave them turnovers. We knew they had dangerous players in the backline and that we couldn’t give them transitions and that’s what we gave them. It was inaccuracy.
“I thought the effort was there, you could see how hard we were fighting through that first 50/60 minutes. I lose count of the number of entries in our 22 where we defended brilliantly, we scrapped for everything.
“But if you keep making errors and you keep letting these teams have shots at you, eventually the ball will bounce for them, and it bounced for them three or four times in that back 20. Just too inaccurate, that’s where we need to be better.”
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