Heineken Cup: Tim Visser looks for Heineken bounce to boost challenge for league play-off place

WHILE the national spotlight turns to Six Nations business, Tim Visser will lead a host of Edinburgh players through the next eight weeks trying to build on the momentum of the Heineken Cup.

The 24-year-old winger will qualify for Scotland in the summer and so is in line to become an internationalist on the summer tour, but, for now, he remains one of the Edinburgh players on the outside looking in as the Test matches return to centre stage.

However, he is hopeful that the squad will take the lead from Sunday’s performance and push on up the RaboDirect PRO12 and create more competition for the Heineken Cup quarter-final match with Toulouse.

“We have a week off now and then we’ll be playing and training with Edinburgh again and getting back to league business,” he said. “But it’s what I’ve been doing for the last three years and I’m excited at having this time to improve on my game and look back at the season I’ve had so far.

“The league games provide a good platform for us to show what we can do and to build upon our game-plan. Any games give that opportunity.”

Edinburgh next face the Ospreys at Murrayfield on 10 February, two days before Scotland take on Wales in Cardiff, and then travel to the Dragons, Connacht and Ulster on successive weekends. They currently languish in ninth spot, 13 points behind Glasgow who currently occupy the fourth and final play-off berth. There are still nine games to go and so, were Edinburgh to use the Heineken Cup as a springboard, and win three of the next four games, they could push themselves into contention. The team will change significantly with the internationalists gone, but what was particularly pleasing for coach Michael Bradley on Sunday was how his side achieved a comfortable victory without internationalists David Denton, Nick De Luca and Chris Paterson.

Paterson will not be lost to Edinburgh this year, while the displays of a host of players not on Six Nations duty – notably Visser, Jim Thompson, John Houston, Stuart McInally, Netani Talei and Grant Gilchrist – provides further hope that Edinburgh can pick up the league pace.

Visser, now on 14 tries for the season, added: “It [Sunday’s win] was top-notch – a great team performance. The forwards created great go-forward ball and the backs attacked their blitz defence very skilfully, and the ten minutes [defending] on our own try line was amazing. I think showed how we have come on as a team and how we can keep teams out of our try area.

“It is exciting for us all now to be looking forward to playing a French team at home in the quarter-final of the Heineken Cup.

“It is massive and is the biggest thing that has happened at the club in a long time.

“But we will take things one at a time. We did that last week and it won’t be too hard over the next few weeks to focus on the league games, but, once we’re nearing the time, I’m sure there will be the necessary adjustments in the team to make sure that we’re up and ready for the big game. It depends on ourselves now how far we take it.”