Edinburgh lock Jamie Hodgson is confident that his team will still play “brilliant” rugby this season. But he is equally certain that, thanks to new senior coach Sean Everitt, they will also play a more intelligent game - ideally starting on Saturday, when they are away to the Dragons in the opening game of their United Rugby Championship campaign.
The brilliance in attack was certainly in evidence sporadically last season, Mike Blair’s second and final campaign as head coach. But it was undermined by deficiencies elsewhere, and since taking over in July Everitt has emphasised the need to sort them out.
One obvious issue last season, when Edinburgh ended up in 12th place in the URC, was the goal-kicking. The 62 per cent success rate was unacceptably low, but with Ben Healy now on board in addition to Emiliano Boffelli and Blair Kinghorn, that problem should be easily rectified.
The other main concern was the number of turnovers given away - something which, according to Hodgson, should also be a fairly straightforward fix. “I don’t think anyone coming into Edinburgh Rugby would think we were broken - it was just the fact that we had to be better,” the second-row forward said. “We’ve got great attacking shape and we play some great rugby at times, so it was just about how we add to that to make ourselves better, and I think he [Everitt] has done that.
“And I think you’ll see that with how we play the game. We spoke about how one of our biggest work-ons from last year was that we just had too many turnovers: we were giving the ball away too much. So we will still be playing some brilliant rugby - but we’ll be playing more smart rugby, I think.
“It’s about how we can make it better. How can we get ourselves further up that league table and into those play-off spots? Because ideally that’s what we play the game for – to get in the top eight, top four with a home play-off, and ultimately getting our hands on some silverware.”
The Dragons were 15th out of 16 in the URC last season, and lost 44-6 at the Hive Stadium last September. But they are tougher customers at Rodney Parade, and will have fewer World Cup absentees than the visitors. That should make the match an instructive examination of the Edinburgh squad’s strength in depth - and a first indication of how well Hodgson and his team-mates have adapted to Everitt’s insistence on smarter decision-making.
