Edinburgh lock Jamie Hodgson is confident that his team will still play “brilliant” rugby this season. But he is equally certain that, thanks to new senior coach Sean Everitt, they will also play a more intelligent game - ideally starting on Saturday, when they are away to the Dragons in the opening game of their United Rugby Championship campaign.
The brilliance in attack was certainly in evidence sporadically last season, Mike Blair’s second and final campaign as head coach. But it was undermined by deficiencies elsewhere, and since taking over in July Everitt has emphasised the need to sort them out.
One obvious issue last season, when Edinburgh ended up in 12th place in the URC, was the goal-kicking. The 62 per cent success rate was unacceptably low, but with Ben Healy now on board in addition to Emiliano Boffelli and Blair Kinghorn, that problem should be easily rectified.
The other main concern was the number of turnovers given away - something which, according to Hodgson, should also be a fairly straightforward fix. “I don’t think anyone coming into Edinburgh Rugby would think we were broken - it was just the fact that we had to be better,” the second-row forward said. “We’ve got great attacking shape and we play some great rugby at times, so it was just about how we add to that to make ourselves better, and I think he [Everitt] has done that.
“And I think you’ll see that with how we play the game. We spoke about how one of our biggest work-ons from last year was that we just had too many turnovers: we were giving the ball away too much. So we will still be playing some brilliant rugby - but we’ll be playing more smart rugby, I think.
“It’s about how we can make it better. How can we get ourselves further up that league table and into those play-off spots? Because ideally that’s what we play the game for – to get in the top eight, top four with a home play-off, and ultimately getting our hands on some silverware.”
The Dragons were 15th out of 16 in the URC last season, and lost 44-6 at the Hive Stadium last September. But they are tougher customers at Rodney Parade, and will have fewer World Cup absentees than the visitors. That should make the match an instructive examination of the Edinburgh squad’s strength in depth - and a first indication of how well Hodgson and his team-mates have adapted to Everitt’s insistence on smarter decision-making.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here