Glen Young assesses Edinburgh display and hopes for Scotland involvement - 'everybody always wants to beat England'

It wasn’t pretty in Parma but Edinburgh kept URC form up with win over Zebre

If any further proof were needed of the improvement Edinburgh have made since Sean Everitt took over as head coach, Friday night’s 24-19 win over Zebre Parma surely supplied it.

The visitors fell behind to an early try in the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi, were ten points adrift at the break, and were still 16-10 behind when Harry Paterson was yellow-carded with around quarter of an hour to go. In short, they were out of sorts, off the pace, and under considerable pressure. Yet they remained composed, almost in spite of themselves, and fought back with two late tries to make it seven wins out of ten in the URC. As Glen Young pointed out, it was not the first time this season that they have come out on top after being behind for a long stretch.

“It was very scrappy, but if you had asked me at 60, 65 minutes if we were to leave with a win and four points, I would have taken it,” the lock forward said. “I’m happy in the end to get the win, but we know we’re much better than that. Maybe in the past we would have lost that. But we’ve talked about being an 80-minute team this year.

Edinburgh's Glen Young breaks away to score a try.

“We’ve had a couple of games where we’ve been behind – Dragons in the first game of the season comes to mind – and we’ve come back away from home to win it in the last 10, 15 minutes. It shows we’ve built a bit of resilience and we’re building to be an 80-minute team, so I’m quite happy with that.”

It was no coincidence that two of Edinburgh’s three tries came from front-row forwards Boan Venter and Dave Cherry, while the other was a penalty try awarded after Zebre had collapsed a maul metres from their line. That superiority up front may have taken a while to be translated into points, but Young said that even when his team were 10-3 behind at the break they had remained sure that they had the beating of Zebre up front.

“I think we had little glimpses of it in the first half,” he added. “The forwards felt like we could grab that one by the horns, and have a bit of ascendancy in the scrum and the maul and in lineout defence, which was going well for us. We had a real focus on that at half-time. And it came to fruition in the second half, which was probably the winning of that game.”

Ben Healy scored the rest of Edinburgh’s points with two conversions and a penalty. Zebre’s only touchdown was by scrum-half Gonzalo Garcia. Giovanni Montemauri converted that score and added three penalties, while another penalty at the death from Geronimo Prisciantelli earned the Italians a losing bonus point. Edinburgh replacement Javan Sebastian was in the bin by that time, while Parma’s Dylan de Leeuw had been shown a yellow card soon after Paterson’s departure.

Young, one of seven members of the current Scotland squad who were on duty for Edinburgh, has been capped on tour but has yet to play in a Six Nations match, and is desperate to be involved when England come to Murrayfield on Saturday. “Hopefully I’ll be in with a shout,” he said. “I would love to get a run out. Everybody always wants to beat England. I know if I’m playing or even if I’m not involved I’ll be really excited for it.”