Fired-up Edinburgh aim to rediscover winning habit

THE INTENSITY with which Edinburgh are approaching their return to league action against the Dragons at Murrayfield was perhaps evident above the eye of Dougie Fife this week.

The former Boroughmuir and Currie winger has shifted to outside centre recently and, as thoughts turn to the Heineken Cup quarter-final in just two weeks, he will make a timely third appearance of the season tonight, albeit with three fresh stitches in an eye cut. A particularly competitive training session then?

“No, that was touch rugby!” he laughed. “It gets pretty intense! No, I just got caught by our prop Jack Gilding. So much for touch. But the guys are pretty focused on this. We have been really disappointing in the league, and we know results have not been good enough, but we haven’t given up on finishing much higher up. We are too good a side to be second bottom. So we need to get wins and also get the winning mentality back for the Heineken Cup because you don’t want to go into that quarter-final on the back of losses.”

The 21-year-old is one of a number of exciting talents coming through Edinburgh’s elite development (academy) group with Grant Gilchrist, Matt Scott and Harry Leonard showing the way this season, and he forms a young centre pairing with Scott, who returns to club duty a Scotland internationalist. The inconsistency of youth has undoubtedly had a bearing on Edinburgh’s league struggles this season, the team sitting in 11th spot now just four points above Aironi and one defeat away from their worst-ever losing run. But what the Heineken Cup has shown is that the team can compete with the best in Europe when they get their game together and, though they are still missing many internationalists tonight, there is a desire to be among them next week and earn a place in Heineken Cup history.

Fife insisted that Edinburgh’s focus iss firmly on the Dragons and the next two league weekends but, when pushed, he admitted that there is a strong motivation to play well and win these games in order to have a chance of featuring when Toulouse pitch up on 7 April.

“You want to play in every game, but the back line at Edinburgh is full of quality players, so I’d be delighted to be involved in that game anywhere on the pitch. Playing well and winning against the Dragons would help.”

The Welsh side welcome back Grand Slam lock Luke Charteris as captain. Sam Parry will make his first league start at hooker and theere is a new half-back pairing of Joe Bedford and Steffan Jones.