Edinburgh hand kicking duties to Blair Kinghorn as they seek to upset champion Stormers

Edinburgh's Blair Kinghorn is back on kicking duty this weekend.

It was Henry Immelman who fluffed his lines in Pretoria and the Bulls hung on to win 33-31 and deny the visitors a famous victory.

Kinghorn missed the match at Loftus Versfeld through illness but has recovered and will start at stand-off.

With Emiliano Boffelli away on international duty with Argentina, Mike Blair’s side have been without their two frontline kickers. The problems were compounded against the Bulls when Jaco van der Walt was injured early on and it was left to Mark Bennett and Immelman to step up to the tee.

Neither is a regular kicker, although Blair made the point that Edinburgh actually plundered a try against the Bulls when one of Bennett’s penalty attempts struck the post and Darcy Graham was quickest to react.

“Having Blair back, who is an international ten, and the skill set and belief he brings to the group is crucially important for us and he will take up the bulk of the kicks as well,” said the Edinburgh coach.

“Mark Bennett did kick a conversion from the touchline and the other kick he took hit the post and we got seven instead of three points out of it.”

Immelman’s two late penalty attempts both drifted wide but Blair noted that the degree of difficulty was high.

“It had an effect on the result because had we kicked either of those goals we would have won the game, but those were tough kicks, one from 47-48 metres on the angle and the other one was from 52-53 metres.

“So, they weren’t easy kicks. Potentially we could have gone to the corner with about six minutes to go to keep the squeeze on the Bulls. But obviously kicking goals is a vitally important part of the game, so we need to get high percentages on that.

“I believe Blair has got a lot of confidence in his kicking and he’s more than equipped to take on that responsibility.”

Ben Vellacott will partner Kinghorn at half-back, replacing Henry Pyrgos in the No 9 jersey, and there are three changes in the pack. Stuart McInally, Hamish Watson and Nick Haining all come in for their first starts of the season, replacing, respectively, Dave Cherry, Luke Crosbie and Bill Mata.

Mata missed the second half of last season with a knee injury and Blair allayed any fears about the No 8.

“He’s fit and he could have played for us this weekend,” said the coach. “He did take a bang to his knee during the game and it just swelled up a little bit so he didn’t train with us on Monday and Tuesday, so we just felt the right things was to give him a week off when Nick Haining has been champing at the bit to get going and get some game-time."

Co-captain Grant Gilchrist is fit to play after recovering from a cut hand and Edinburgh will need all their big guns against the URC champions who are on a 12-game winning run and back on home turf at the Cape Town Stadium after beating Connacht in Stellenbosch last week.