Edinburgh Rugby reaction: Five-try haul, lineout woes and Matt Currie injury update after opening night defeat

Edinburgh's Duhan van der Merwe runs though for a try as teammate Mosese Tuipulotu celebrates but it was Leinster who won, 33-31, at Hive Stadium. (Photo by Ross Parker / SNS Group)

Sean Everitt strived to accentuate the positives as Edinburgh scored five tries but were edged out 33-31 by Leinster on the opening night of the United Rugby Championship season.

Everitt praised his side’s discipline and was pleased with the five-try haul but was less impressed with the lineout and their failure to deal with the visitors’ kicks in behind.

Edinburgh led early through a Pierre Schoeman try but conceded two softs scores to Tommy O’Brien and Charlie Trector soon after. They then lost Matt Currie to a hamstring injury but bounced back with a fine try from Duhan van der Merwe after good work by Ross Thompson and a lovely assist by Jamie Ritchie.

The sides went in level at 12-12 at the turn and Edinburgh came out flying at the start of the second half, with Dave Cherry scoring off a driving maul. But three Leinster tries in a fatal 11-minute spell gave the hosts too much to do as Jordan Larmour, Jamison Gibson-Park and Jack Conan all crossed for the Irish side.

Van der Merwe, with his second try, and Matt Scott, after the 80 minutes were up, brought Edinburgh close but it wasn’t enough, although they did secure two bonus points.

“It is very sore because we've been criticised for not scoring tries and I'd like to look at it as a positive,” said Everitt, the Edinburgh head coach. “To score five tries against Leinster is a good effort from the boys but we've also got to keep teams out. We weren't able to do that today. I think if we had got more positions in the 22 we might have been better.

“Maybe we would have got six which would have won us the game. But we couldn't do that. and it wasn't down to discipline. It was a disciplined performance from us. We gave away five penalties when most of the game we spent in our own half. The guys are to be commended for that.

“I think our lineout execution let us down. Set-piece is also a major contributing factor to winning rugby games. I think we lost four and we got held up in the maul. So that makes it five out of 14 [set-pieces]. You're not making life easy for yourself. We were out-kicked and they kept on turning us which put us under the pump.”

Everitt and his squad will fly to South Africa on Saturday where they will play the Bulls and Lions in rounds two and three of the URC. The coach said it was too early to say whether Currie would make it.

“I thought the guys did well to keep Leinster out of our 22 for long periods of time,” added Everitt. “So that's a massive positive for me. But getting 37 per cent territory in the game does eventually take its toll. Games are won on set-piece, disciplined territory and defence.

“The middle part of the second half is where they scored their three tries unfortunately. It came from them putting in good kicks behind us and exposing us in the backfield. It's something that we need to work on and it was something that was our strength last year.”

Everitt played down the fact that Leinster were missing more than a dozen Irish internationals.

“I think we all know that Leinster have got depth in their squad,” said the coach. “If you look at their back line, Garry Ringrose, Jamison Gibson-Park, Luke McGrath, Sam Prendergast who's going to be a future Irish player, Ross Byrne, they're also full of internationals.

“So there are a lot of positives that we can take out of this game. Obviously we wanted the result, we believed that we could have got the result, but there is some pleasing stuff.”

Byrne was yellow-carded late on for taking out Darcy Graham in the air.