It's not a lost cause. Far from it. That was the message from Jamie Ritchie last night as he contemplated the 12-point deficit his Edinburgh team will take into Saturday’s return leg of the 1872 Cup match at Murrayfield.
The capital club certainly ended Friday night’s match at Scotstoun on the back foot as Glasgow pressed for a try bonus. It was a source of frustration for the home team that they did not get that fourth touchdown and had to settle instead for four match points in the 22-10 victory that took them back to the top of the URC.
That is nonetheless a decent advantage for the Warriors to take to the national stadium, but from an Edinburgh point of view it is by no means insurmountable. The visitors may have looked jaded towards the close, and only touched down once, through WP Nel, but they had a lot of pressure earlier in the game.
Ritchie believes that if his team can make more effective use of their opportunities as well as maintaining better self-discipline, they will have a chance of turning the tables on their rivals and securing the aggregate win. Edinburgh enjoyed a lot of pressure earlier on in the match, but heavy rain and a difficult wind hampered their attempts to bring Duhan van der Merwe and Darcy Graham into the game. Even so, it was only when club captain Grant Gilchrist was sent to the sin bin for repeated offending that Glasgow really got on top, scoring two tries during the lock forward’s ten minutes off the pitch.
“Derby games are often closely fought, and the weather turned on us in the second half at Scotstoun,” Scotland skipper Ritchie said. “That made it a bit harder to score tries, but credit to Glasgow for managing to get themselves over the line a couple of times. I’m backing us to chase that down and we’ll do our best to turn it around.
“I don’t think too much will change for us in terms of the strategy we take into the game. Hopefully the weather is a wee bit better. The real focus will be on taking the opportunities we create and making sure we take it to them at home.
“A drier ball would help. Keeping hold of it as well, when we have the ball and are attacking. Making sure we are accurate in how we execute - that would be another thing.”
After going behind to a Kyle Rowe try, Edinburgh had hit back to lead, and were still 10-8 ahead when Gilchrist saw yellow. Then Warriors substitute Johnny Matthews put his team ahead with a signature try from a maul before Ally Miller got the home side’s third.
“We were pretty up on the territory stats and created a few opportunities, but our discipline let us down,” Ritchie accepted. “With back-to-back maul penalties and a yellow card, they scored two tries.
“It’s tough when you’re defending with 14 men. We know that Glasgow have a really strong maul. It’s something we looked at during the week and that we felt we dealt with pretty well in the first half, but when you give them so many entries through poor discipline, they’re going to take a couple.
“It was definitely a frustrating one for us. We left a lot out there, a lot of it through our own errors. Credit to Glasgow for keeping us out, but our discipline let us down at times, and we coughed up the ball two or three times in their 22.
“There were a few positives in there - but a lot for us to work on before next week.”
A capacity Scotstoun crowd of 7,172 saw the Warriors get the win they needed to go back to the top of the URC, and the home support were as raucous as ever as their team closed out the victory. But an attendance of more than four times that is expected on Saturday, with a new record for the fixture of around 30,000 likely to be set.
“Scotstoun is a tough place to come and play, even without the weather,” Ritchie added. “The fans at Glasgow are always really loud in their support.
“It will be awesome [if there is a record crowd at Murrayfield]. It feels like Scottish rugby is in quite a good place, and hopefully that shows in a record attendance for the game.”
Before then, Ritchie and his team-mates, like their Glasgow counterparts, have the chance for a rare break in a hectic season. “We’re off through Boxing Day then back in on the 27th,” he said. “Guys have a little bit of time off to get away from rugby and spend some time with their families, which we’ve not had in a long time. It will be really nice.”
