Edinburgh need to take wider view to get more of ball, reckons Hawick’s Darcy Graham
Borderer Darcy Graham reckons keeping play on the straight and narrow rather than taking a wider view is at least partly to blame for Edinburgh’s troubles this United Rugby Championship season.
Having failed to qualify for this term’s play-offs, the capital city club’s competitive season is all but over, rendering their two remaining fixtures – away to Newport’s Dragons on Saturday, May 9, and at home to Ireland’s Connacht a week later – little more than dead rubbers.
With ten points left to play for, head coach Sean Everitt’s side, currently 12th in the table on 33 points from 16 fixtures, can’t finish any higher than tenth and could potentially be overtaken by three of the four teams below them and that’s a frustrating end to a season already forthcoming with more than its fair share of frustration, admits the Hawick 28-year-old.
“It’s been very frustrating – frustrating because we aren’t fulfilling our potential,” said the ex-Green.
“We are saying the right things and we are doing the right things in training but we are lacking maybe the ability to move the ball wide and get ourselves on the ball.
“It is something we have to look hard at over the break, in pre-season, and to see how we can build on it.
“At the start of the season when I looked at the fixtures, I thought ‘we have a really good run of home games’, but it’s only good if you are in the fight, so we have kind of lost that.
“If we can build and get four out of four here, it makes our pre-season totally different and we can take that momentum into the pre-season and into the first game, but we still have a long way to go.”
Graham has scored six tries in 13 games for his club so far this season, his latest coming during last Friday’s 33-28 home win against Durban’s Sharks.
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