Edinburgh away to Dragons

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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby Friday Knight Lights on Sun Nov 27, 2016 6:55 pm

The referee was one thing, but we were awful at the rucks today. Our clear outs were weak and ineffective, we allowed the Dragons to do what they pleased and that's just not good enough. We should have Ritchie Gray working hard with us over the coming weeks if possible. I understand why Bradbury was omitted from the Scotland squad as his breakdown work was poor.

It was a naive performance, we tried too much too soon. We needed to set a platform and go through the phases rather than fling the ball wide at the first opportunity. We did look better when Weir came on to steady the ship. It will be as Weegie said for a while, it's an inexperienced coach and inexperienced team trying something different.

We were lazy in defence too and just got physically dominated all over the pitch. The Dragons were making yards every carry and getting over the gain line but we did not.

Positives: Dean was good, Kinghorn was lively. Mata looked good when he came on - as did Weir, Rambo and SHC. But a long, long task ahead.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby Friday Knight Lights on Sun Nov 27, 2016 6:56 pm

GaryIPA wrote:10th and well adrift of 6th


Yeah we're not getting Champions Cup this year, Champions Cup teams don't lose to Zebre at home. That's been apparent for a while. This season has to be about blooding young players and creating a style of play for next year. The SRU need to decide on Hodge pretty soon because it would be handy if the coach to take us forward had a lame duck season to work out some things.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby doedin on Sun Nov 27, 2016 7:01 pm

I thought the refereeing of the breakdown was a shambles but the Dragons played him better than us. The young guys are good in many ways but lack the muscle and the grunt to look after the ball at the breakdown and it showed. We didnt do anything that the Dragons were doing well ie slow to roll away, leaving guys behind the ball to prevent the clear out, clearing out beyond the ball, etc. I lost count of the number of turnovers they made or how many times we were penalised at the breakdown. We lost the breakdown completely and with that the game, their 7 was excellent today and made the difference.

I thought we could have and should have won that game but anytime we got close you knew that we were going to cough up the ball or make a stupid mistake. We never looked like we were in control of that game at any point and probably didnt deserve to win it. We look a bit rudderless at times and Weir brought a bit more control and leadership into the game when he came on, he needs to start from now on.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby The Feral Goat on Sun Nov 27, 2016 8:44 pm

Tweet from ex defence coach Omar menumine(sp?) sacking Solomons a mistake and our budget is half of Glasgows and less than most of other top teams.


Not sure how much weight to give to it could be sour grapes could be something in it.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby gowrie on Sun Nov 27, 2016 9:29 pm

Think it's fair to say I'm a little bit skeptical about the scale of that claim. No doubt we have a smaller budget than Glasgow, but it's got to be much closer to 1:1 than 2:1. It's not like we're paupers, we signed the likes of Manu, Bresler and Burleigh under Solomons, they may not be the big name superstars but they were experienced Super Rugby players who'd be weighing multiple offers from top level clubs.

Perhaps his statement was inclusive of other items like coaching wages, support staff etc; but I doubt it's on the level he's talking about.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby The Feral Goat on Sun Nov 27, 2016 9:50 pm

Agree, Glasgow have far bigger gate receipts for one. I saw the retweet by a bbc journo will see if any more comes of it.

Budget ain't the cause of our inconsistency anyway.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby Tichtheid on Sun Nov 27, 2016 9:59 pm

gowrie wrote:Think it's fair to say I'm a little bit skeptical about the scale of that claim. No doubt we have a smaller budget than Glasgow, but it's got to be much closer to 1:1 than 2:1. It's not like we're paupers, we signed the likes of Manu, Bresler and Burleigh under Solomons, they may not be the big name superstars but they were experienced Super Rugby players who'd be weighing multiple offers from top level clubs.

Perhaps his statement was inclusive of other items like coaching wages, support staff etc; but I doubt it's on the level he's talking about.



It wouldn't surprise me if Mouneimne's claim is close the the truth - Glasgow is full of first and second choice international players, we had four in the squad yesterday, Glasgow had fifteen.

Bresler wouldn't have cost the earth, neither Burleigh. Hardie might have been expensive but I read he was given the choice and chose us over Glasgow. Manu would have been a big spend, but we lost Scott whilst Gray stayed at Scotstoun, for example

Huw Jones will be an interesting and revealing one, if the SRU are interested in leveling up then Jones has to come to Edinburgh, whilst Glasgow currently have around six quality players in the midfield
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby hp18 on Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:21 pm

Tichtheid wrote:
gowrie wrote:Think it's fair to say I'm a little bit skeptical about the scale of that claim. No doubt we have a smaller budget than Glasgow, but it's got to be much closer to 1:1 than 2:1. It's not like we're paupers, we signed the likes of Manu, Bresler and Burleigh under Solomons, they may not be the big name superstars but they were experienced Super Rugby players who'd be weighing multiple offers from top level clubs.

Perhaps his statement was inclusive of other items like coaching wages, support staff etc; but I doubt it's on the level he's talking about.



It wouldn't surprise me if Mouneimne's claim is close the the truth - Glasgow is full of first and second choice international players, we had four in the squad yesterday, Glasgow had fifteen.

Bresler wouldn't have cost the earth, neither Burleigh. Hardie might have been expensive but I read he was given the choice and chose us over Glasgow. Manu would have been a big spend, but we lost Scott whilst Gray stayed at Scotstoun, for example

Huw Jones will be an interesting and revealing one, if the SRU are interested in leveling up then Jones has to come to Edinburgh, whilst Glasgow currently have around six quality players in the midfield

Maybe, just maybe Glasgow have (over a good few years) actually done a good job of developing youngsters and picking up unfancied rough diamonds from around the world and turning them into quality players, all of whom buy into the club and the style of play? And in a full strength Scotland team the numbers gap is closer.


Btw, here's the failed ex assistants first thoughts

"not keeping Alan Solomons will soon reveal itself as an error. Losing to Zebre was a first hint"

Everyone has an angle.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby Friday Knight Lights on Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:26 pm

Tichtheid wrote:
gowrie wrote:Think it's fair to say I'm a little bit skeptical about the scale of that claim. No doubt we have a smaller budget than Glasgow, but it's got to be much closer to 1:1 than 2:1. It's not like we're paupers, we signed the likes of Manu, Bresler and Burleigh under Solomons, they may not be the big name superstars but they were experienced Super Rugby players who'd be weighing multiple offers from top level clubs.

Perhaps his statement was inclusive of other items like coaching wages, support staff etc; but I doubt it's on the level he's talking about.



It wouldn't surprise me if Mouneimne's claim is close the the truth - Glasgow is full of first and second choice international players, we had four in the squad yesterday, Glasgow had fifteen.

Bresler wouldn't have cost the earth, neither Burleigh. Hardie might have been expensive but I read he was given the choice and chose us over Glasgow. Manu would have been a big spend, but we lost Scott whilst Gray stayed at Scotstoun, for example

Huw Jones will be an interesting and revealing one, if the SRU are interested in leveling up then Jones has to come to Edinburgh, whilst Glasgow currently have around six quality players in the midfield


The SRU are only interested in levelling up if that means Glasgow continue to challenge. It doesn't make sense to make them worse to make us better.

I wouldn't be surprised if true, especially Hogg's rumoured wage is far exceeding anything we'll pay. Glasgow are a better team, more internationals, a good coach, a larger crowd etc etc. They deserve more money and it's quite right their success has been invested in.

Of course, they got to where they were by enabling young players like Hogg, Russell, Bennett etc and bringing in unknown talents like DTH, Naka, Matawalu etc. The wage structures will have started out the same but where Glasgow flourished we floundered and the SRU budgeted accordingly. It makes perfect sense. If Solly progressed he'd have received larger budgets but he didn't.
Last edited by Friday Knight Lights on Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby gowrie on Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:26 pm

How many of those fifteen would be on high wages? Gray and Hogg sure, but the others are mostly unproven/starting out (Price, Hughes, Fagerson, Allan) or got their last contracts before they improved enough to attract serious attention from others (Brown, Dunbar, Bennett, Horne, Russell, Seymour).

The point about the SR players wasn't that they'd be expensive, but that it shows we have a comparable budget to other top level teams in the Pro12 and mid-table AP, Glasgow are not big spenders and if we truly had half their budget then we wouldn't stand a chance at signing players of those calibre.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby hp18 on Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:53 pm

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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby macdone on Mon Nov 28, 2016 12:51 am

The Feral Goat wrote:Tweet from ex defence coach Omar menumine(sp?) sacking Solomons a mistake and our budget is half of Glasgows and less than most of other top teams.


Not sure how much weight to give to it could be sour grapes could be something in it.


Solomons did some good things but it was an awful 3 years for spectators. I personally hope we never go back to that kind of percentage rugby. The only mistake was not getting rid sooner. The budget wasn't the issue. The issue was he was half the coach that Townsend is.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby doedin on Mon Nov 28, 2016 9:31 am

macdone wrote:
The Feral Goat wrote:Tweet from ex defence coach Omar menumine(sp?) sacking Solomons a mistake and our budget is half of Glasgows and less than most of other top teams.


Not sure how much weight to give to it could be sour grapes could be something in it.


Solomons did some good things but it was an awful 3 years for spectators. I personally hope we never go back to that kind of percentage rugby. The only mistake was not getting rid sooner. The budget wasn't the issue. The issue was he was half the coach that Townsend is.


Agreed - plus Solomons pished a lot of cash away on some very dodgy signings.

However money wasn’t the issue yesterday, it was the breakdown and we had two young inexperienced props and a two young guys in the back row who were found out when it came to clearing out and protecting the ball. Our pack was sadly lacking some grunt and experience which was compounded by not putting enough guys into the breakdown to look after the ball once we realised thats what the Dragons were targeting. Too often we sent one guy up with the ball with only one guy in support. The lack of our experienced props (Nel, Dickinson, Del, Sutherland) plus a 2nd row like Bressler prepared to hit the rucks hard was telling. A Watson or Hardie were also missed, Ritchie is a cracking player but he isn't yet as strong as these guys in the rough and tumble, their 7 had a field day. Too many of our back row were standing out wide waiting to run with the ball rather than doing the donkey work, not sure if that was tactical or just eagerness to run the ball.

TBF to Hodge he didnt really have much more to choose from in the forwards, that was essentially the 8 that was available to him. We had another 3 young guys on the bench, McInally just back from Scotland duty plus Mata who you wouldn’t call a breakdown expert either! Hopefully lessons have been learnt and they spend all week working on the breakdown.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby Oldsalt on Mon Nov 28, 2016 9:51 am

Agree with most comments so far. That was embarrassing for Edinburgh. The back row for me was the main culprit that and trying to throw "wonder" passes out wide. One bright spark though is we seemed to improve a bit when Mata and SHC came on.
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Re: Edinburgh away to Dragons

Postby The Feral Goat on Mon Nov 28, 2016 10:29 am



Good find HP. A £300K difference is probably a couple of decent players (or from an ER point of view retaining Nel) but nowhere near enough to justify the current performance gulf.

Re the Dragons match and the breakdown - Do we think we go out with a game plan to commit X number at the ruck? Is it tactical naivety from Hodge or players or both that we appear unable to adapt on the fly?

I don't think we can be writing off another season as a "development season" it may be a young team that we are putting out most weeks but only McCallum and Cosgrove or not in their second seasons. Too many of our better players are out of contract again at the end of this season I really worry that a number will decide to go elsewhere to get Champions cup rugby and that will set us back even further.

If Hodge then does not get the job full time does the following season become a "settling season" for the new coach and the cycle of pish continues.

We are not quite at the midway point there is still enough matches to get us back in the fight but we have to get our performances sorted now and start picking up points in every match.
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