{"id":453054,"date":"2025-09-26T15:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T15:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/453054\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T15:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T15:04:13","slug":"edinburgh-hand-debuts-to-whitcombe-oconor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/453054\/","title":{"rendered":"Edinburgh hand debuts to Whitcombe &#038; O&#8217;Conor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Whitcombe and Piers O&#8217;Conor will make their competitive Edinburgh debuts as Sean Everitt&#8217;s side start the new URC season at Zebre on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Scotland-qualified prop Whitcombe signed on a three-year deal from Leicester Tigers earlier this summer, while versatile back <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/articles\/cz70q29v31yo?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bsport%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:O&#039;Conor arrived from Connacht on a two-year deal;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">O&#8217;Conor arrived from Connacht on a two-year deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Magnus Bradbury captains the side from number eight, while Lions duo Pierre Schoeman and Duhan van der Merwe are both named on the bench.<\/p>\n<p>Edinburgh finished seventh in the URC last season under Everitt, losing to Bulls in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think everyone&#8217;s raring to go,&#8221; Everitt said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s been a long pre-season, it&#8217;s been nine weeks, the guys have played two games now and we can&#8217;t wait to start. We&#8217;re all looking forward to it and excited about what it might bring.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think we&#8217;re well equipped if you look at the amount of hours we&#8217;ve spent on the training pitch, particularly over the last four to five weeks because we&#8217;ve been able to train really well with the numbers that we&#8217;ve had.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We got a lot of 15 v 15 training so everyone is well equipped. We&#8217;ve got two new caps this week which is exciting for them but the rest of the team have all played together before.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Edinburgh side to face Zebre: <\/strong>Goosen, Paterson, O&#8217;Conor, Lang, Brown, Healy, Vellacott; Whitcombe, Ashman, Hill, Sykes, Gilchrist, McConnell, Crosbie, Bradbury.<\/p>\n<p>Replacements: Harrison, Schoeman, Rae, Skinner, Watson, Shiel, Thomson, Van der Merwe.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758899053_575_\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Whitcombe and Piers O&#8217;Conor will make their competitive Edinburgh debuts as Sean Everitt&#8217;s side start the new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,58856,1102,4884,26240,20795,10757,33923,152248,712,5219,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-453054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-duhan-van-der-merwe","10":"tag-edinburgh","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-james-whitcombe","13":"tag-leicester-tigers","14":"tag-magnus-bradbury","15":"tag-pierre-schoeman","16":"tag-piers-oconor","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-sean-everitt","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115271216057252795","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}