Some of the top English rugby clubs have been complaining that they don’t have the cash to succeed in Europe any longer, that they are being outspent by the French.
As excuses come, it is a pretty lame one, particularly when Edinburgh’s achievements this season are taken into account.
Both of Scotland’s pro rugby teams have less money to spend than almost every single English top-flight club – and, in most cases, considerably less. The Scottish teams are also the poor relations compared to the Irish, the Welsh and certainly the French.
Yet Edinburgh topped their pool and Glasgow came second in theirs, and they did so with almost entirely home-grown sides. Money? Yes, it’s important, but it is not a prerequisite for doing well in Europe and those grumbling English rugby bosses should look at what’s really wrong with their game rather than just clutching at financial excuses (safety first, one-dimensional play and lack of flair, primarily).
It is worth, though, putting Edinburgh’s achievement in perspective. This is a side with no big-name southern hemisphere stars, with one Fijian and one Dutchman as foreign imports and with the rest Scottish players.
This team of relative nobodies in European terms was dismissed as having no chance of progressing from its group. The bookies gave odds of 150/1 on Edinburgh winning the Heineken Cup even after the team had beaten London Irish away on the first weekend.
Yet Edinburgh went on to top their pool, winning five out of their six matches, two with four-try bonus points and scoring 17 tries in the process – an average of almost three per game. Edinburgh emerged from the pool stages as the third-best seeded team in the competition behind the two European heavyweights of Munster and Leinster.
In the quarter-finals, Edinburgh will play Toulouse, who have more resources for a third or fourth XV than Edinburgh have for their entire squad. They are the Real Madrid of European rugby. In any normal year, Edinburgh should be afraid of Toulouse – but this is anything but a normal year and this is anything but a normal Edinburgh team.
The two most impressive aspects of yesterday’s 34–11 victory over London Irish were Edinburgh’s ability to score the four tries they needed to secure a home quarter-final and the ferocity of the defence at the start of the second half.
For the best part of 20 minutes, London Irish were camped on the Edinburgh line, yet the Scots kept the Londoners out and only conceded a try later on when they started throwing the ball around in the hunt for the bonus point.
Not one of the players let down their team-mates. Each one was immense, as they had been all through this most extraordinary of European campaigns. And, if they play like that against Toulouse, then they can certainly come away with a win. It won’t be easy but it can be done – and this Edinburgh team need fear no one at Murrayfield, they way they played yesterday.
It is also worth noting that Edinburgh coped with the loss of three internationals shortly before kick-off: back-rower David Denton, centre Nick de Luca and full-back Chris Paterson. Yet this didn’t seem to matter, because their replacements were up to the job and excelled when called on to step up to the team.
The big unknown, however, is whether Edinburgh can use this year’s success as the springboard for further strides forward in the future. It was great to see a crowd of nearly 11,000 at Murrayfield yesterday and surely the SRU must be aiming to double that for the quarter-final.
Success breeds success, it brings in crowds, money and a winning mentality – all of which the Scottish game has been starved of for years. It would terrible if Edinburgh went back to playing in front of a couple of thousand diehards every week, but they might end up doing that unless they can win more consistently in Europe.
The aim must be to replicate the Irish sides – Munster, Leinster and South Africa B (sorry, Ulster) – all of whom expect success in Europe.
This season has been fantastic for Edinburgh, but it really needs to be the start of something that is self-sustaining. However, given the way the players acquitted themselves yesterday, that might just be possible.
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