Edinburgh beat Cardiff as Heineken hopes soar

EDINBURGH captain Greig Laidlaw praised the work of his forwards and the backs around him for helping to carve up Cardiff in last night’s 19-12 win, but the skipper called on his players and Edinburgh supporters to push on over the festive period and then to the Heineken Cup quarter-finals.

His side now sit top of pool two by virtue of having scored double the number of tries of Cardiff, but they will hope a late bonus point secured by the Welshmen last night – a fourth Dan Parks’ penalty cutting the deficit to seven points – will not deprive them of a first appearance in the quarter-finals since 2004.

If Cardiff and Edinburgh were level at the top of pool two after the final two matches in January, the Blues would qualify for the quarter-finals on account of having earned more match points in the head-to-head – five to Edinburgh’s four. Laidlaw insisted that it failed to dent the delight at victory over a club with much greater resources, adding that beating Racing Metro in Paris and then London Irish at Murrayfield next month was the simple way to erase that concern.

“We were disappointed to give the bonus point away,” he said, “but we have lost to Cardiff the last seven times so we’re delighted to come away with a win from what was a big game for us.

“If you gave us three wins out of four at the start of the competition I’d have bitten your hand off.

“We’re top of the pool now with tries scored, so we’re in a good position and it’s in our hands now.

“We’ve got to go away to France and then London Irish are a good team coming up here, but going down to London and getting a win and putting Racing away here was massive for our confidence and there’s plenty of confidence in this squad.

“We were closed down in in Cardiff, but the scoreline maybe flattered them, so it was good to put them away here.

“The youngsters are coming through well; guys like Grant Gilchrist who does his job really well.”

Laidlaw spoke of his pleasure at how simply his backs sliced open what is a famously parsimonious Cardiff defence, praising the work of Nick De Luca, James King and Chris Paterson in providing him with various options.

His own performance against Dan Parks, who struggled with poor ball last night, will also have given Scotland coach Andy Robinson more to think about before intriguing Glasgow match-ups.

“I was happy with the way I played, especially in the first half. Me and Mike got some good ball and the guys gave me good options, so I was delighted with my performance tonight.

“I’m looking forward to the two games with Glasgow over the next couple of weeks, and hopefully that can help to put more bums on seats.”

Edinburgh coach Michael Bradley added: “I’m very pleased because that was a much-improved performance.

“Cardiff did very well last week at the breakdown and we let them physically dominate us, but the boys worked on that and were very good.

“After four matches we’re joint top of the group.

“Hopefully, that [the bonus point] won’t be a key factor at the end of the group, but we have played Cardiff eight times now, and this time we did so well at the breakdown that the rest of our game fell into place for large portions of our match so that was a very good performance and three wins out of four is a good start.”