Edinburgh ended 2023 on a high with a win over old rivals Glasgow, and according to Ben Healy they are confident that the New Year will see them keep up the progress they have made so far this season.
That 19-14 victory over the Warriors at Murrayfield on Saturday may not have been enough to reclaim the 1872 Cup, but it did make a vital difference to the capital club’s standing in the United Rugby Championship table as the regular season reached its halfway point. Had they lost, they would have fallen out of the top eight once the rest of the games in round nine had been played. Instead, they are now safely inside the play-off places as the URC prepares to take a break until mid-February.
That scenario meant there was a certain amount of pressure on Edinburgh going into the weekend game, especially after their 22-10 defeat in the first leg at Scotstoun. But, while Healy accepted that the victory came at an opportune time, he insisted that his squad had not felt unduly stressed by the situation.
“Yeah, it was important,” the stand-off said. “There were no emergency meetings or anything like that - it was just a loss away from home. It was just system errors [in the first leg], and they’re a good team when they get into your 22.
“We just gave them too many opportunities. So like I said, I wouldn’t say it was an emergency or anything, but it is good that we did more of what we said we were going to do this time. We know that if we keep doing that and just keep adding to that, then the results will keep coming.”
In terms purely of wins and losses, the results have been pretty good: played six and lost three in the URC, the same as Glasgow. But some of the victories have been slim ones, and as a result Edinburgh are five points behind the Warriors through having picked up fewer bonuses.
Of course, the achievement of narrow wins should not be sniffed at. Under Mike Blair last season, Edinburgh got into the habit of losing some matches they could and should have won, whereas under Sean Everitt, they have won a few they might well have lost.
Yet, having said that, Healy insisted that neither he nor the squad as a whole would be satisfied with those narrow wins, and suggested that more solid victories would be a key measure of progress in the second half of the season. “It wasn’t perfect at the start - we scraped a few wins. But I would say the place where we are at the moment, I’m really confident every time we go out that if we do what we say we’re going to do in terms of game plan, if we execute it we’ve never lost this season.
“Any time we lose, when we come in on Monday we’re just looking at copious amounts of clips of us not doing what we said we were going to do. So that fills me with a lot of confidence. If we can just get more consistency with that, fine-tune that, we’ll be in a really good spot going forward.”
Healy himself, it should be said, has been one of the most consistent performers - perhaps the most consistent - in the squad. He was rested along with a number of other key players for the opening Challenge Cup pool game against Clermont, but has otherwise played every minute, and has been vital to Everitt’s attempts to implement a more pragmatic game plan.
“We’re growing,” he continued. “We don’t need to peak until the play-offs, and it’s a long old season. We’re definitely far better - if you think back to that first game against Dragons down there” - a hard-fought 22-17 victory to which he contributed five penalties and a conversion - “we came away after scraping a win.
“We have a lot more strings to our bow now. So I’m happy with where we are - the first half of the season has flown by - but there’s still plenty more to grow. And I think just adding those finishing touches when we go into those big games coming down the straight - we need to add a few little things, fine-tune things. But I think overall we’re in a pretty good place.”
The same could be said of Healy himself, who made his Scotland debut in last year’s Six Nations and went on to play at the Rugby World Cup. He seems certain to be an important member of Gregor Townsend’s squad for the Championship this year too, though insisted he had other business to deal with before turning his thoughts to the international arena.
“We’ll tackle it when it comes. We’ve got two more club games to go in the Challenge Cup. We’ll wait and see - I’ll focus on Edinburgh for the next three weeks.”
