Injuries to Blair Kinghorn and Duhan van der Merwe have turned what was an already tricky trip to Belfast into a positively perilous one for Edinburgh tonight. With Darcy Graham and Emiliano Boffelli both still missing through injury, the loss of the two Scotland internationals means that senior coach Sean Everitt is without his four leading back-three players for the United Rugby Championship game against Ulster.
Everitt has still been able to field an all-international pack, and there is quality back-up on the bench, both up front and behind the scrum, with the likes of Hamish Watson and Ali Price being named among the replacements. Nonetheless, the back line has a distinctly makeshift look to it. Summer signing Tim Swiel, a stand-off, comes in for his debut at full-back; and full-back Harry Paterson, who has four appearances to his name, is on the wing.
Kinghorn will join up with his new employers Toulouse on Monday, but both he and Everitt had insisted during the week that he was eager to turn out for Edinburgh one last time. Instead, what the coach described as “a minor knock” sustained in training means that the Scotland international’s last outing for the capital club was the wholly avoidable 22-24 defeat by Benetton eight days ago, in which he scored two tries but also gave away the Italians’ score with an ill-advised pass off the deck close to his own line.
“We, and I’m sure Blair, would have liked to see him play his last game for the club,” Everitt said yesterday after announcing a team that shows seven personnel changes from the one that began against the Italians. “But he has picked up a minor knock in training and unfortunately misses out.”
In addition to the quartet of back-three absentees, nine other players are unavailable to the visitors because of injury: Luan de Bruin, Dave Cherry, Paddy Harrison, Jake Henry, Mikey Jones, Cameron Neild, Sam Skinner, Scott Steele and Nathan Sweeney. Nonetheless, Everitt stressed the positive aspect of a selection in which the depth of his squad will be tested.
“We’ve made a number of changes this week – a few unfortunately down to injury – but that’s really exciting for the guys who come in and get their opportunity,” he said. “It’s great to see Tim Swiel step up at full-back, having been made to wait for his chance.
“We’re lucky enough to have strength in depth at other positional groups where we’ve been able to rotate, while we welcome back experienced players like Bill Mata, Jamie Hodgson, Hamish Watson and Mark Bennett, who will all be champing at the bit to make an impact.
“It’s set to be another massive test, but one we’re definitely relishing. We travel to Belfast with plenty of quality in our ranks.”
Ulster also have an abundance of ability in their squad, notably up front in the shape of South African World Cup-winning loosehead prop Steven Kitshoff, who will make his first start, having come off the bench in the defeat at Glasgow Warriors a week ago. Everitt is well aware of the impact that loss will have on the home side, and also stressed the need for his own players to learn from what went wrong in their defeat by Benetton last time out.
“It’s important that we get back on the horse and focus on the next game,” he said. “That was extremely disappointing, but you can’t fault the performance in a way - [Benetton scored] three soft tries, two of them 90-metre tries when we were on attack and looking to score ourselves.
“We need to look after the ball. When you’ve got a lineout five metres from the opposition line to win the game with five minutes to go, we should expect to win that, but we didn’t.
“So there are learnings we took out of that. And we need to take those learnings into the game against Ulster, because we need to be accurate for 80 minutes, especially away from home, against a team that is going to be hungry after their loss to Glasgow last week.”
