Edinburgh’s confidence building, says Greig Tonks
If Edinburgh do win in Lyon then they will be at least four points clear going into their final game, at home to second placed Bordeaux-Begles a week on Friday. They would need to implode in catastrophic fashion in order to surrender top spot under these circumstances.
It really should not happen – but that doesn’t mean it won’t. This is Edinburgh, after all.
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Hide AdThe fact that the boys from the Scottish capital are catchable at all is down to the fact that they have failed to pick up any bonus points whatsoever from their clean sweep of four victories in the competition so far. Bordeaux-Begles have lost twice, but they have picked up two bonus points for scoring four or more tries and one losing bonus point for finishing within seven of Edinburgh when the two sides met at the start of the competition back in October.
It will be minor source of irritation to Alan Solomons and his team that they have not been able to secure their destiny earlier but, given where they have come from, the overriding emotion must surely be of quiet satisfaction at the way they have used Europe to reconfigure the trajectory of their season.
“The fact that we’ve won four out of four means that we can have a slightly different focus from which we can draw confidence. It gives you a bit of momentum,” explains Greig Tonks, who is likely to wear the No 10 jersey on Saturday, although he would be equally at ease at full-back if required.
The Edinburgh team will look back to their previous encounter against Lyon at the end of October with mixed emotions. A freak run of injuries in that game left six players side-lined for several weeks – with Scotland captain Grant Gilchrist still out and almost certain to miss the Six Nations with a broken arm – but, ultimately, the great spirit shown to secure a 25-17 win was a pivotal moment.
It wasn’t an overnight transformation. Edinburgh lost heavily in their next league match away to Leinster and came unstuck again at Zebre at the end of November, but there have been more good days than bad these last three months and it has been a long time since we could say that about Edinburgh.
“We went on to get a good couple of wins over London Welsh, even if we made quite hard work of those matches, and then had back-to-back matches against Glasgow Warriors, which ended quite well for us and then beat Connacht over there on Friday. That has given us a little bit of confidence whilst also reminding us of how tough it is going to be,” said Tonks.
“Ultimately, we want to be top six in the Pro 12 and qualifying for the Champions Cup, but, this year, we didn’t make it, so we have tried to make the best of the situation and perhaps show a few people that we deserve to be playing in the top competition,” he added.
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