Stuart McInally ready for his biggest-ever game for Edinburgh

Captain eager to celebrate tenth year at club with Pro14 final place

Stuart McInally during an Edinburgh training session at BT Murrayfield

It has been a turbulent year for amteur pilot, hooker and Edinburgh skipper Stuart McInally but he is calm and focused as he looks ahead to the biggest game he has played for his home city club in Saturday evening’s Guinness Pro14 semi-final against Ulster at behind-closed-doors BT Murrayfield.

It is coming up for a year since that deflating World Cup opener in Yokohama when McInally, who went to the tournament as captain of his country, saw things fall apart as Scotland got off to a desperately poor start.

The hooker was dropped and Greig Laidlaw took on the captaincy before a pool-stage exit. Club coach Richard Cockerill, pictured, gave him a few months off and he returned fresh, finding club form again and featuring for Scotland in the Six Nations before the coronavirus shutdown brought everything to a shuddering halt.

“I feel in a good place,” said the 30-year-old. “The World Cup feels a long time ago now. So much has happened since then on and off the field.

“I’m excited and fully focused on Edinburgh. It means a lot to me. This is my tenth year at the club now.

“I’ve been captain now for the last few years, so to lead out the team in such a big game is brilliant and to do it at home at BT Murrayfield makes it even more special.

“It’s obviously sad we’re not going to have fans there but totally understandable. We’re looking forward to putting our best game out there and trying to reach our first-ever final.”

Vocal support would have been good but simply not possible at the moment as an empty national stadium follows last weekend’s 700-fan pilot which is being reviewed ahead of an expected government update about sporting events in the middle of the month.

McInally still believes home advantage comes with benefits as Edinburgh avoid the upheaval of overseas travel after more than six months of being not much further than their houses and Murrayfield.

“We were delighted to secure the home semi-final,” he said “Things like being in our home changing room, not having to travel – these all keep us more familiar with our surroundings and they just help, I think, in these games.

“The crowd factor’s not there – that would be another home advantage, I suppose – but we’re chuffed that we’ve got the home semi, that we earned it by finishing top, and that we get a chance to play in our familiar surroundings. It’s brilliant.”

McInally has been part of Edinburgh teams who have reached a Heineken Cup semi-final in 2012 and Challenge Cup final in 2015 but believes this Saturday is their biggest game ever in the “domestic” Pro14 competition.

He points to the narrow 20-16 quarter-final loss to Munster in Limerick two years ago as one to remember heading into the Ulster clash.

“The main thing I learned was that those big games just come down to really small moments. And small moments that happen in other games – it could be a lost lineout or a scrum penalty – sometimes you get away with them and you can then make up for it later in the game, or there’s time to score another try,” said McInally. “In a knockout game, against the big teams, you can’t afford that. When a team loses they’ll look back on one or two moments and they’ll say, ‘Well, that potentially cost us’.

“That’s one thing I feel we’ve learned. If you look back on those two games against Munster, they were both decided on small moments. They were both one-score games. That was something I was stressing to the boys: we just have to stay in the moment..”

Cockerill insists Ulster’s history in the competition as past winners and regulars at the business end make them favourites, but asked if he is telling his players something different, McInally revealed: “He certainly doesn’t tell us the opposition are rubbish. We are very aware and he makes us aware of the threat that Ulster have. Not just their history, they play some 
really good rugby, have some quality players and are well coached.

“We have spent a good amount of time looking at Ulster because you’ve got to respect what they can do. They can cause a lot of teams problems. He [Cockerill] gives us confidence to go and play, that’s the best way I could describe it.

“He’s not putting us down or building us up, just giving us confidence to back ourselves and that the work we do in training will stand us in good stead during games.

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