Lights go out on Edinburgh and Georgia

Published on Wednesday 19 November 2008 09:28

IN the course of a distinguished career, both as player and coach, Andy Robinson has seen and done it all.

But even the former Lions and England internationalist had never experienced what occurred at Meggetland last night as a freak floodlight failure caused the Edinburgh side he now mentors to abandon their prestige friendly with Georgia after 26 minutes.

Following an approximate quarter-of-an-hour delay a 500-strong crowd were promised refunds while officials blamed the disruption on a severed electricity cable in the vicinity of the ground.

Robinson admitted the situation had been especially frustrating given Edinburgh had built up a 19-0 lead.

"I thought we played really well, it was really encouraging," he said. "There was really aggressive running and good keep-ball. That is what you look for from a side."

While the impact on Edinburgh's preparations for next Friday's home Celtic League clash with Ospreys remains to be seen – Robinson acknowledges there will be some knock-on effect – at least Edinburgh were able to give run-outs to recent injury victims John Houston and Ross Rennie.

Flanker Rennie, in particular, grabbed his chance with two tries while the other came from Greig Laidlaw with David Blair adding two conversions.

Skipper Simon Cross, after making an appeal for the match to be replayed this afternoon which fell on deaf ears due to the opposition's tight schedule, had little option but to pick out positives.

"We focused on controlling possession for the first half and we did that really well," he said. "As a club we are hugely disappointed because we don't get the chance to play international opposition very often.

"We wanted to prove to ourselves as a club how good we can be at times. That would have been a great scalp. There were boys coming back from injury all over the place and it is disappointing for them."

One of these recent injury victims, Rennie said: "At least we played some proper rugby when we were out there.

"We do a lot of contact stuff in training but it is nothing like playing in a game. I can add that to a back-up match against Glasgow and 15-20 minutes against Connacht."

The masterclass Rennie gave in support running last night will surely be enough to bring him back into contention for a return to competitive action.