1872 Cup: Pressure mounts on Bradley as his charges continue to freefall

THIS match raises three questions.

How on earth can an Edinburgh side that was so thoroughly outplayed come so close to winning? Why do Edinburgh wait until deep in the second half to start playing to their undoubted strengths? Just what has happened to Edinburgh under Michael Bradley over the past 18 months?

Bradley seemed to be bemused on all three counts. “We are better than we look but we deserved to lose,” said Bradley. “I’m worried, disappointed, frustrated. We were always chasing the game and didn’t give the crowd much to cheer. Our management of the game was poor and we made it very easy for them – we need to look at that. And it could have been worse because Glasgow should have scored a couple more tries and will have been disappointed not to get a bonus point.”

Bradley said beforehand that starting well was the key, yet things went awry from the start, with Sean Maitland forcing his way over for the simplest of tries with barely five minutes on the clock. From there until Edinburgh’s rousing late finale, the decline was gentle but unmistakable: this was a match which only one side was ever going to win.

If Bradley must have been crying inside, Edinburgh’s fans were making their feelings known more volubly. Or at least those who bothered to turn up were. At 11,255, the crowd was almost exactly 2,000 less than this time last year, which has become an increasingly worrying theme at Murrayfield of late, with crowds plunging towards 3,000. The capital’s rugby punters, it seems, are voting with their feet.

On the pitch, Edinburgh’s forwards were beaten up in the loose exchanges, driven off their own scrum ball and were second best at the breakdown. The back division which set the Heineken Cup alight last year once again struggled to get to grips with the new-found precision and incision of the visitors under Gregor Townsend, and was carved open for the opening try.

There was no stinting on the effort or physicality – there never is in the 1872 Cup given that its status as a de facto trial provides a healthy degree of niggle – but despite the presence of doughty scrappers such as Chunk Jacobsen, David Denton and the irrepressible Roddy Grant, confidence is not Edinburgh’s strong suit just now. Bradley’s team do not lack good old-fashioned gumption, but when it comes to belief in their game-plan, they seem almost tentative about doing what they do best and giving the ball some width. In the first half Tim Visser was passed the ball just once, and that was when he came off his wing.

Edinburgh’s performances have nosedived as alarmingly as their win-loss ratio in the league under Bradley. Where they so often ground out close wins in the league under Andy Robinson, now they invariably lose.

Yesterday, only a curious lack of a clinical edge from Glasgow, who spurned three conversions and a penalty, kept the score close. It could have been worse had Dougie Hall’s perfectly good first-half try not been disallowed by referee Neil Paterson, and had Glasgow not spurned a three-on-one overlap or had Stuart Hogg not dropped a pass over the line when it was easier to score.

No matter what it said on the scoreboard, the possession and territory stats told the story of a surprisingly one-sided match played largely in Edinburgh’s half. At no point did Edinburgh ever look remotely likely to overhaul Glasgow, let alone deliver the ten-point win that they needed to wrest back the 1872 Cup. Indeed, for the first 70 minutes they looked like the summit of their ambition was to spend some time in Glasgow’s 22.

This is a result which consolidates Glasgow’s position in the top four (they finished the match in third place), a position which has become the norm for a Warriors side which has a famously tight dressing room. It’s also a result which leaves Edinburgh rooted in the bottom four, although at least they are two places higher up the league than last season’s second-bottom finishing position.

Bradley signed on in May 2011 on a two-year contract to coach Edinburgh until the end of this season. It hasn’t worked, and it doesn’t look as if it will ever work. Is it perhaps time for Edinburgh to cut their losses before even more damage is done and gate receipts are lost?