Hope is a great and powerful thing. Unless you are an Edinburgh or Scotland Rugby supporter. To us, hope is a way of giving disappointment a crescendo.
After two bonus point wins at home, Edinburgh delivered an all too familiar submissive loss to bottom of the league Ospreys.
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Let’s cast our minds back to how the end of last season fizzled out. With two matches to go, Edinburgh were set to play a home match against Munster, who finished top of the league, and an away match at Benetton. At that point, a win in either would surely have been enough to scrape into a play-off spot.
The Munster match was closely fought battle. Both teams rose to the occasion showing determination, aggression and desire. Edinburgh kept the scoreboard ticking over and even scored some tries. Munster edged it on the day, but it could have gone either way.
Edinburgh then travelled to Benetton for a game that felt like an easier prospect. We had held our heads high against Munster so went to Italy with confidence.
A win would have seen us through, but even some bonus points would have kept the permutations alive. One of the worst performances I have seen Edinburgh fail to put on resulted us coming away with absolutely nothing.
Following the season capitulation, players and coaching staff apologised that it was not good enough. The apology is currently feeling hollow as it doesn’t appear that behaviours have changed.
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We are a third of the way through the league part of the season and it can be summed up pretty easily. Home matches have been far from perfect, but have shown desire and determination. Four try bonus points in every Hive match is an impressive feat. Away matches could not be more contrasting.
As Stevie Lawrie said “It’s quite simple: 12 points at home and one away”.
I wouldn’t mind being the underdogs, snatching the occasional win, but this Jekyll and Hyde personality of being contenders one minute and a soft touch the next is infuriating.
Underperforming in away matches is not new. We won four away games last season. Dragons and Zebre are both underdogs in the league, but both gave us scares and took losing bonus points off us.
The Cardiff match was when we were “playing every game like it was a final” and they had all but written off their disappointing season. The 7-24 scoreline flattered our mediocre performance.
The only away game that provided a feeling of satisfaction was against Ulster, but this was a team in the doldrums and who sacked their manager two months later.
Our away record is both alarming and deteriorating. Even with our new-found ability of obtaining bonus points, only winning matches at home is not good enough.
The difference is stark. Edinburgh’s attack at home still lacks rhythm, imagination and penetration, but at least there is an attack. Away from home we refuse to build any form of phase play. We are a panicked team devoid of confidence or control.
The only try of the game was a moment of solo opportunism from Ben Vellacott. These tries have become his trademark and are invaluable, but do not constitute an attacking strategy for the team.
When pushed after the humiliation of the Lions game, Sean Everitt said there would be consequences for players’ mistakes.
It appears that the first punishment he’s enforcing is for players seen in possession of the ball! We rarely had it and when we did, we looked like we didn’t want it, often kicking it away to parts of the pitch we had no hope of chasing.
As an aside, I was wholly unimpressed when Everitt was asked the follow-up question of whether there would be sanctions following the Lions embarrassment.
He replied that the team had done enough in the second half to make amends.
Winning the second half and walking away with nothing does not warrant redemption.
Again, this week he said: “I’m disappointed with how the game went but I thought our boys played really well and there was a lot of effort”.
The autumn internationals will provide a re-t for some players, but with an entire team of first choice players away on international duty, there will be fatigue and fragmentation when they reconvene in a month.
The next block of matches are an extremely difficult run to build up momentum with internationalists rested, switching between URC & EPCR and then stop again for the Six Nations.
At the full-time whistle on Saturday I couldn’t see how we could salvage anything from this season.
This was a knee-jerk reaction and I must remember that we have played some of our toughest games. The coveted top eight league positions are, however, slipping away.
A run of excellent performances between the two international windows is essential to get back on track.
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