‘About time’ says Mark Bennett after hat-trick for Edinburgh

Mark Bennett dives over to score the second of his three tries for Edinburgh in their 50-15 Pro14 victory over Zebre. Picture: SNS/SRU

It was by no means a  perfect performance –  “clunky at times” was Richard  Cockerill’s assessment – but both the head coach and the centre himself were delighted with the attacking flair on display in the first Pro14 match of the season.

Bennett, who has been hit by injury problems for much of the time since joining Edinburgh two years ago, admitted he felt his man-of-the-match display had been overdue.

“I’m chuffed with that,” said the 26-year-old, who reckoned it was his first hat-trick since his days playing club rugby for Cumnock. “It’s been a long time coming – it’s about time I put in a performance for Edinburgh, so I’m as much relieved as I am chuffed. I’ve been s***e for two years.

“I just want to play. I’m just happy to be back out there and running about. We created plenty chances, we made plenty errors, but it’s the first game of the season and we scored 50 points, so we’ve got to be happy with that.

“They’re a really hard team to play against. They fly off the line in defence and it’s not easy at times, but during the week we said just stick to what we do, and if we do our own roles well we’ll create chances. And we did create chances – and we took plenty of them. It was a pretty strong performance.”

With Matt Scott also showing up strongly and Duhan van der Merwe again proving to be a powerhouse on the wing, Cockerill now has a potent back division to go with a pack that has been formidable for some time.

“We’ve got a team out there that look like they’re enjoying playing rugby,” the coach said. “Probably at the end of last year from a backs point of view we were a bit stodgy. We’ve hopefully tried to solve that.

“Mark’s been injured for two years. He’s had a full pre-season, he’s fully fit, and we’re starting to see the quality that he has. We play a system that gets the best out of his skill set.”

Jaco van der Walt claimed 13 points via five conversions and a penalty, while Simon Hickey added another conversion. The other tries were scored by Fraser McKenzie, Nic Groom, Jamie Farndale and Scott, who went off with a tweaked ankle but will be fine, according to Cockerill.

Hooker Dave Cherry, however, injured a shoulder and may be out for a couple of weeks.