Scrivener left to rue errors after Edinburgh lose again

EDINBURGH claimed a losing bonus point in defeat to Cardiff last night, but still fell another place in the Magners League to tenth spot after being overtaken by Irish strugglers Connacht.

The Scots slumped to their 11th league defeat of the season and fifth in a row since the win over Glasgow at Murrayfield on 2 January as their virtual second-string side lost out to a Cardiff team with much greater strength in depth.

Nick Scrivener, the Edinburgh interim coach, said: "It's frustrating because that was another game that was there for the taking.

"There were areas that we definitely improved in, our intensity was better and the way we scrambled and defended was a positive, and the way we finished and kept going at them and got the bonus point was another example of our attitude, working hard for each other, and that's important.

"But the game was lost because of our errors. That ultimately was what cost us the game. Execution has been one of our problems right through and I don't think they manifest themselves as a result of a lack of confidence.

"We just have to be better at executing things. I thought we showed confidence more in the second half. I thought Cardiff were slowing ball down a fair bit at the breakdown and we struggled to work off slow ball, but we were better when we speeded it up.

"We showed in periods in the second half when we got to seven or eight phases, we got away, and it's about having the patience to get to that point."

He added: "If there's any positives to take out of the loss it's the exposure some of these guys have got, like Struan (Dewar] up against a vastly experienced back row, and Lewis (Niven] did well. But I don't think it was that much experience but our execution of skills.

"We've lost a number of games by a few points, but if we hadn't made so many errors we'd have won that game. So it's for us to get better and come through the other side. It has been a difficult period for us, but we have five games to go and no-one's going to get us out of this apart from ourselves. We will dig ourselves out of this. We have to learn from this."

Elsewhere, in the Magners League last night second-placed Leinster beat Scarlets 26-15, Connacht edged Italian side Treviso 31-25 in Galway, while Ulster ran out 23-10 winners over bottom side Aironi at Ravenhill.