Ben Vellacott pinpointed Edinburgh’s struggles to accumulate bonus points, misfiring attack and one particularly shocking home defeat as reasons for their URC failure.
The capital club flopped spectacularly in a must-win game against Benetton in Treviso on Saturday, collapsing to a 31-6 defeat when victory would have sent them to the playoffs.
A bruising afternoon in the Italian sunshine saw Edinburgh slide from seventh – which would have brought Champions Cup qualification as well as a place in the knockouts – to 10th on the final day of the regular season.
That abruptly brought an end to an underwhelming campaign but scrum-half Vellacott looked all the way back to their first meeting with the Italians, a 24-22 defeat at the Hive Stadium in November, when assessing where things went wrong.
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“I think the big thing for us was losing at home against Benetton. That was a defining moment in the season,” Vellacott said.
“Not picking up bonus points against teams when we should have, whether that’s losing bonus points or scoring tries, that’s somewhere we’ve been lacking this season.
“Our attack hasn’t quite functioned as well as we hoped, as it has in previous seasons. But we’ve improved in other areas of our game where we’ve struggled in the past.”
Edinburgh achieved 11 league wins in 2022/23, five more than last season and their highest tally in four years.
That included four victories on the road, including a statement win over Ulster in December, and impressive victories at home against South African heavyweights the Lions and the Bulls.
But Sean Everitt’s side picked up only five bonus points – three try bonuses and two losing bonus points – which was the second-lowest tally in the league behind the second-bottom Dragons.
“The big thing for us is looking at the performances throughout the season,” Vellacott continued.
“We had a big away win at Ulster, something the club hasn’t done in a long, long time. Beating the South African teams at home has been a big one for us.
“But soft moments have killed us, like losing to Benetton at home, we’ve just been inconsistent at times.
“We had a pretty strong performance against Munster last week and they won it last year, so it shows we can perform with the big guns at the top of the table. We just have to be better at our decision making.”
Although Edinburgh fly-half Ben Healy finished the regular season as the top scorer in the league with 175 points, the capital club’s attacking game failed to impress in former Sharks boss Everitt’s debut season.
Edinburgh scored 22 fewer tries over 18 URC games than in 2022/23, and Vellacott admitted that something has to change.
“We’ve got to get a healthy balance. Over the last couple of years, we were very attack minded and leaking a lot of soft tries which was hurting us,” he said.
“This season we’ve been pretty defensively strong and our kicking game has been good.
“We’ve got to get that balance of where our attack can grow and where our defence can grow. We’ll get there.”
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