Mark Bennett admits 'blooming long' six-month break between Edinburgh Rugby matches might help in ‘stupid sport’

By his own admission rugby can be a “stupid sport” but Mark Bennett is hoping to take the positives from Edinburgh’s extraordinarily long off season.

Mark Bennett during an Edinburgh Rugby training session at the Hive Stadium. (Photo by Ross Parker / SNS Group)

The club have gone exactly six months between competitive games and Bennett believes the extended lay-off could be beneficial after 12 seasons in the pro game. Rugby’s physicality doesn’t come without consequences and the skilful but slight centre feels he could profit from the break. “Absolutely,” he said. “It is a brutal sport, it is a stupid sport at times – especially when you are my size – so it has been nice for the body to get a wee bit of a break from the general aches and pains of getting a kicking every week.”

Edinburgh made a successful return to meaningful action on Saturday by defeating the Dragons 22-17 in Wales in their first match of the new United Rugby Championship campaign. Their last league outing before that came on April 21 against Ulster in Belfast, half a year previously.

It made for a long pre-season and Bennett said the players were champing at the bit to get going at Rodney Parade. “Don’t get me wrong, [pre-season] was excellent, we got through a lot of work, but it was hard going and the boys were ready to play. I probably reckon that fed into that first 20 minutes with everybody just really eager to do something because it had been so blooming long. It’s good for us to now know that we are into the season and we can actually crack on and play.”

Perhaps understandably, Edinburgh lacked a little accuracy in the opening exchanges and fell 14-0 behind before coming back to win. They host the Emirates Lions this weekend, a team well known to new Edinburgh coach Sean Everitt who spent the entirety of his coaching career in South Africa before coming to Scotland. Bennett said the players were getting to grips with Everitt’s style of play which involves more kicking than they were used to under predecessor Mike Blair.

“There have been some changes,” said the centre. “Sean is quite stats driven, which I really like because you can’t hide from stats. You see the numbers that are there and he backs everything up on why we want to do things, so he’s very, very clear on his thinking behind how we want to play the game. I like knowing the theory behind what we are doing which gives us real clarity on what we’re trying to achieve. So, I’ve really enjoyed working with him since he’s come in, and I’m excited to see what we can do this season.

“The way we’re looking at it is that we’re not kicking the ball away, we’re kicking the ball to regain it, and hopefully get more opportunities on counter-attack and more opportunities in the right areas of the field to play. The time for me to get on ball will come. The weekend wasn’t one of them, partly through our errors and partly through Dragons’ defensive line-speed – they were coming up really hard so it was really difficult to get that ball into space. There are going to be weeks when it just doesn’t come, that’s just the nature of the game, but hopefully this week isn’t one of them.”