Challenge Cup: London Welsh v Edinburgh, 14 December

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London Welsh v Edinburgh Rugby
Sunday 14 December 2014
KO 14:30
Kassam Stadium, Oxford

BBC Radio Oxford and BBC Sport website. No, really.

Referee Alexandre Ruiz (France)
Touch Judge 1 Sebastien Minery (France)
Touch Judge 2 Cedric Clave (France)
Fourth Official Andrew Small (England)

A. Teams:

1. London Welsh

Kear; Elder, Awcock, May (capt), Scott; Barkley, Lewis; Aholelei, Morris, Vea; Schofield, Down; Browne, Kirwan, McCaffrey.

Replacements: Vella, Reeves, Cooper, Corker, Pienaar, Rowley, Weepu, Reynolds.

2. Edinburgh

Cuthbert; Fife, Scott, Strauss, Visser; Tonks, Hidalgo-Clyne; Sutherland, Cochrane, Andress; Bresler, Toolis; Leonardi, Grant, Coman (capt).

Replacements: Hilterbrand, Shiells, Nel, McKenzie, McInally, Hart, Heathcote, Beard.

B. Tournament Form:

1. London Welsh

7/12/14 - Edinburgh 25 - 13 L Welsh

23/10/14 - L Welsh 20 - 52 Bordeaux

18/10/14 - Lyon 28 - 18 L Welsh

2. Edinburgh

7/12/14 - Edinburgh 25 - 13 L Welsh

24/10/14 - Edinburgh 25 - 17 Lyon

17/10/14 - Bordeaux 13 - 15 Edinburgh

C. Head to Head

1 Played 1
0 Wins 1
1 Losses 0
0 Draws 0
1 Tries 3
1 Conversions 2
2 Penalties 2
0 Drop Goals 0
19 Points 25

BigGee wrote:

Imperialbigdave wrote:Even though weve won, this cannot be spun positively. 8 tries in 4 games when 2 games were against the worst team in the premiership is not the standard we should be expecting. Solomans has completely blunted our attacking game with his play by the book at all costs otherwise ill freeze you out of the club mentality.

No knowledge of seeing what the game was like, but it is hard to say how you cannot spin a 100% record positively!

Perhaps a bit of hyperbole, however the twitter feed basically read knock on, penalty, free kick, blown chance etc etc...

Having watched some of the worst rugby ive ever seen being played by Edinburgh this season and last, I think its a safe bet to say the performance today wasnt an improvement.

VinceWLB wrote:Edinburgh isn't a team who will put to the sword their opposition, remember they are supposed to be a "set-piece team" which is another way of saying that they won't score many tries but will rely on winning (or not) through kicks.

Can't tell much about this one without having seen it but looked to be a more professional display than the one last week.

But you need to have a good defence to be that kind of team. Granted our challenge cup defensive stats are impressive, but our pro12 tries for and against is utterly pathetic. The players keep saying their defence is really good when being interviewed, but weve conceded 27 tries before the halfway point in the season. Only Treviso who are having a nightmare season have conceded more.

The first thing any good team does is make themselves hard to beat. Glasgow were a stuffy team in that mould, grinding out wins until they finally found their wings under Toonie. If the wins keep coming, then eventually some confidence to play with a bit more adventure will come along as well.

It sounds like it may well have been individual mistakes that cost rather than the tactics. Whose fault does that lie with. It is always really hard to say unless you have seen the game. It does seem that they were never in danger of losing this one. If they get anything from the last 2 games they should qualify and one more win should see them topping the group and hopefully a home tie in the next round.

If we don't manage a try BP against the worst top level team in Europe, when are we ever going to get it?

Imperialbigdave wrote:

VinceWLB wrote:Edinburgh isn't a team who will put to the sword their opposition, remember they are supposed to be a "set-piece team" which is another way of saying that they won't score many tries but will rely on winning (or not) through kicks.

Can't tell much about this one without having seen it but looked to be a more professional display than the one last week.

But you need to have a good defence to be that kind of team. Granted our challenge cup defensive stats are impressive, but our pro12 tries for and against is utterly pathetic. The players keep saying their defence is really good when being interviewed, but weve conceded 27 tries before the halfway point in the season. Only Treviso who are having a nightmare season have conceded more.

To be fair the defence has improved significantly. An awful lot of those tries were shipped at the beginning of the season and at the times they were decimated by injury. It has been a lot better recently and they were actually pretty impressive defensively in some of the games I have watched. It has certainly been good in these European games.

RDW_Scotland wrote:If we don't manage a try BP against the worst top level team in Europe, when are we ever going to get it?

What would you rather have, a win or a bonus point? For the moment, I would be happy with the win. You can go back to playing chuck it about and you will lose narrowly a lot more than you would win. That was the traditional Edinburgh way.

Learn to win first, learn to win big later!

BigGee wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:If we don't manage a try BP against the worst top level team in Europe, when are we ever going to get it?

What would you rather have, a win or a bonus point? For the moment, I would be happy with the win. You can go back to playing chuck it about and you will lose narrowly a lot more than you would win. That was the traditional Edinburgh way.

Learn to win first, learn to win big later!

I agree with all that, but the point I'm making here is that London Welsh have been truly abysmal this season, and we've had two stuttering wins against them!


I don't think many people would disagree that if we'd had the 2nd half tactics from the beginning last week we would have easily had a try bp - that's the coaches fault.

Treviso on Friday will be a real marker - they have also been crap this season, and just shipped 60 points to the Saints!

Teams that are low on confidence themselves often do struggle against other poorer teams. How many times have we seen that from Scottish teams with both shape of balls.

Just about all of Edinburgh's really good performances this year. Munster, Bordeaux, Lyon were all against teams that on paper were much better than them and they have struggled against teams at their level or poorer, Zebre, Connacht etc.

That all smacks of a mind set lacking in confidence and surely the only way to improve that is to win often and keep winning and hopefully they will eventually start to win these easy games, easily. Until they get to that place, these games will remain a bit of a banana skin, where they are stilted by the fear of losing. I repeat what I said before, bonus points are not important at the moment, wins are all that matter!

BigGee wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:If we don't manage a try BP against the worst top level team in Europe, when are we ever going to get it?

What would you rather have, a win or a bonus point? For the moment, I would be happy with the win. You can go back to playing chuck it about and you will lose narrowly a lot more than you would win. That was the traditional Edinburgh way.

Learn to win first, learn to win big later!

Have to agree with that, their forward oriented brand of rugby doesn't allow for a lot of tries either.
Problem is that apart in Europe, results haven't really improved and the tactics are certainly putting a lot of people off.

Congtatulations on the wins lads.

One point.

That gorgeous creature that you have for the London Welsh ewe looks suspiciously like a Cheviot - what's going on here?

As a Northumberland lad who.. err.. 'knows' his sheep and feels a close... err.. 'affinity' with them, I feel slightly degraded that you have a fine Northern animal linked to a (sort of) London (sort of) Welsh side.

Just saying like.

Jeezo GC standards really are slipping - you can't even get your sheep right now!

George Carlin wrote:

and what was that??

whocares wrote:

George Carlin wrote:

and what was that??

It's the special effects 'evil sheep' created for the comedy film 'Black Sheep'. Makes me laugh every time. Never gets old.

TrailApe wrote:Congtatulations on the wins lads.

One point.

That gorgeous creature  that you have for the London Welsh ewe looks suspiciously like a Cheviot - what's going on here?

As a Northumberland lad who.. err.. 'knows' his sheep and feels a close... err.. 'affinity' with them, I feel slightly degraded that you have a fine Northern animal linked to a (sort of) London (sort of) Welsh side.

Just saying like.