“We said we wanted to get 10 points out of the two home games and we’ve done that,” he added. “Obviously, we’ve got to wait for other results to see what we need to do next week but if we didn’t get to 10 tonight, it would have been really difficult for us. It keeps us in the hunt and, like I say, next week a couple of points will be really good, or four away from home will be fantastic. But we’ll need to improve on what we delivered tonight.”
The game got off to an inauspicious start for the home team when visiting captain Seb Atkinson cut between Ross Thompson and Douglas on the right then sent Josh Hathaway over in the corner for the opening try with just a minute and a half played.
Edinburgh worked hard to get themselves back into the game, and van der Merwe thought he had tied the contest with a rampaging run down the left touchline, but play had already been called back for a forward pass from Douglas as he dived over the line, and the capital side ended up falling three-points further behind instead when George Barton bisected the posts following a high tackle by James Lang.
Ben Vellacott was clearly in the mood to make an impact against his old club, with one zig-zagging run in heavy traffic leaving at least three lumbering Gloucester forwards grabbing at thin air, and then an even sharper piece of rugby from the little scrum-half delivered his team’s first points of the night, when he broke down the left, exchanged passes with Lang, then skipped past two more men on his way to the line
Darcy Graham, meanwhile, wasn’t having such a good time. As ever, there was no lack of desire to insert himself into the action, but he got penalised for holding on to the ball on the deck to end one promising attack and thrice knocked-on under pressure, with a frustrated boot smashing the pitch-side advertising boarding after the third of those fumbles.
Edinburgh lost Matt Currie, who pinged his hamstring as he attempted to drop the ball forward on 25 minutes, just before Barton extended Gloucester’s lead with his second successful penalty of the night.
And the West Country outfit struck again with only a minute of the first half left to play, aided by a series of home errors – notably Ewan Ashman being isolated and eventually turned over at an attacking line-out maul and Wes Goosen badly misjudging a clearance to surrender a knock-on penalty on his own 10-metre line – which saw the visitors go from being under pressure inside their own 22 to Charlie Atkinson winning the race to touch down Mike Austin‘s speculative chip into the Edinburgh home in-goal. This time, Barton managed the tricky conversion to make it 5-18 at the break.
There was plenty of heat in the battle between Edinburgh and Gloucester on a chilly night at Hive Stadium. Image: Bryan Robertson
Edinburgh again lost control of the ball at an attacking line-out maul early in the second half half, Callum Hunter-Hill gave away a silly penalty for diving on a Gloucester player on the deck, there was box-kicks which were too short, and kicks to the corner which ran over the dead ball line, as the home team made heavy work of grinding their way back into the game.
Then, finally, it clicked. Slick hands saw Graham get within feet of the line, and although he didn’t quite make it, Edinburgh kept their foot on the accelerator to pick up two close-range penalties, which they tapped-and-charged, eventually leading to Ashman finally powering between the posts, to set up an easy conversion for Thompson, which made it a six-point game with just under half an hour left to play.
A scrum penalty near halfway allowed Barton to edge his team back beyond a single score in front, but Edinburg came again, with Douglas chasing down a Graham kick up the tramlines to secure his fifth turnover of the match, and that provided the platform for another period of pressure from which Liam McConnell muscled over – once again right under the posts – meaning another straight forward conversion for Thompson, to make it a two point deficit now needing overturned.
Something had shifted. Edinburgh were now winning the 50-50s. Graham collected a high ball in heroic style, and Thompson’s cool as ice kick into the corner caught Jack Cotgreave between a rock and a hard place, forcing the Gloucester winger into conceding a line-out 10-yards from his own line. McConnell’s clean take at the tail set up a maul which charged towards the scoring zone at breakneck speed, leading to the desperate Atkinson picking up a yellow-card and most importantly conceding a penalty try for collapsing.
Despite being down to 14-men, Gloucester managed to pull three points back with a fourth penalty from Barton, given against Schoeman for illegally making a nuisance of himself on the deck, but that’s as close as they got, with Edinburgh doing a pretty professional job of closing out the match by keeping their opponents hemmed inside their own half during the final few minutes.
Teams –
Edinburgh: W Goosen; D Graham, M Currie (P O’Conor 25), J Lang, D van der Merwe (C Shiel 70); R Thompson, B Vellacott; J Whitcombe (P Schoeman 29), H Morris (E Ashman 29), O Blyth-Lafferty (P Hill 29), C Hunter-Hill (E McVie 74), G Young, L McConnell (T Dodd 70), F Douglas (B Muncaster 61), M Bradbury.
Gloucester: G Barton; J Cotgreave, W Butler, S Atkinson, J Hathaway (J Morris 42); C Atkinson, M Austin; V Rapava Ruskin (C Knight 47), W Crane (G Knowles, 65), N Laulala (A Fasogbon, 47), F Thomas (C Jordan 61), M Alemanno, D Gwynne (J Venter 61), L Ludlow, J Clement
Referee: Luc Ramos (France)
Scorers –
Edinburgh: Tries: Vellacott, Ashman, McConnell, Penalty Try; Con: Thompson.
Gloucester: Tries: Hathaway, Atkinson; Con: Barton; Pen: Barton 4.
Scoring sequence (Edinburgh first): 0-5; 0-8; 5-8; 5-11; 5-16; 5-18 (h-t) 10-18; 12-19; 12-21; 17-21; 19-21; 26-21; 26-24.
Yellow cards –
Gloucester: Atkinson (68 mins)
Attendance: 7,439