EDINBURGH full-back Blair Kinghorn is convinced his team are still in the fight for a quarter-final place in the Challenge Cup despite dropping points at home to Bordeaux on Friday night.
The capital side were 10 points ahead at one stage of the match at Murrayfield, but in the end were fortunate to emerge with a 16-16 draw after Bordeaux opted to equalise with a late penalty instead of kicking to touch and going for what would have been the winning try. That left both sides on seven points at the top of Pool Three, with the French club clearly the happier with the outcome.
But Kinghorn, who scored Edinburgh’s only try while Jaco van der Walt chipped in with a conversion and three penalties, believes his side did enough to show they can win the rematch after the turn of the year.
“We’ll definitely go over to Bordeaux and feel like we can win the game,” the Scotland international said. “We’ve not come away from this totally empty-handed. Although we’re disappointed, we’ve still taken a couple of points out of it, which is great. It’s the best of a bad situation. You obviously want to win your home games and we’ve got a great record at home, so we’ll refocus and come back all guns blazing in the next game.
“It was a game we could have won. We certainly had the chances to put the game to bed, especially in the second half. We just didn’t execute that final pass. We showed good ambition, because even when Bordeaux levelled it, we had a chance to win it right at the death.
“We had some good shape at times in our attack. It was just that final pass that let us down.”
Edinburgh return to PRO14 action on Friday night when they have a tough trip to Munster, then it is on to the Challenge Cup double-header against Wasps before they play Glasgow Warriors, also home and away, over Christmas. Kinghorn and his team-mates have a good recent record in derby games, but will be underdogs in the other matches, and he knows that to get anything out of those games they will have to take more of their chances than they did against Bordeaux.
“There were times when we had some mauls right on their five-metre line, but we didn’t execute properly,” he added. “At the end of the day, I think we can only really look at ourselves. I don’t think there’s anyone else to blame.”
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