Edinburgh Beat Those Winter Blues

Edinburgh Beats Cardiff Bluesn 21–12

Edinburgh finally woke up as a team for the first time in a month or two to provide the sort of display the hardy faithful at Murrayfield were growing accustomed to at the start of the season.

Gone is the 1872 Cup and most likely the chance of Heineken Cup glory, but the capital team still has a chance for an end-of-season playoff spot. After coming in second last season, it should really be a minimum expectation.

For now, this win puts them in third, but Leinster now has two games in hand (one against Connacht). The rest of the league has one due to all the postponements this weekend.

The try drought was eased by a couple of cocky darting breaks from the impressive Rory Hutton. He has brought a spark to an Edinburgh attack that had allowed indecision to creep into the Cardiff defence and be capitalised on by the support runners.

I thought he looked pretty decent in defence too—Cardiff didn’t send Jamie Roberts at him nearly as much as they should have—with a couple of good tactical kicks. Although his passing was a little haphazard, there is no substitute for the will to attack.

Overall, Edinburgh dominated in attack and defence for large chunks of the game until discipline threatened to let Cardiff back in later on. Roddy Grant made an interesting looking No. 8 but was the usual hive of industry. He would surely have been Seren Y Gem but for a late sin-binning. So they gave it to Ross Rennie instead who was at least playing in his proper position.

Jim Hamilton looked twice the player he was last week (For starters, he made Ford’s lineouts look a lot better). Both Ford and Chunk made their usual excellent contributions in the loose, including a scything Mike Blade-style break from the base of the ruck from the prop that could only be described as epic.