The return of Graham, who missed the start of the season with an ankle injury he suffered playing for the British & Irish Lions in Australia the summer, could add some valuable spark to the Edinburgh back play, but only if the players inside are able to get him into the game enough to make full use of his ability to beat an opponent on a sixpence and finish scores in the tightest of corners.<\/p>\n
\u201cDarcy Graham<\/strong> is in full training, so welcoming back and seeing him buzzing around the field is great, and he\u2019s available for selection,\u201d confirmed Scott Mathie,<\/strong> Edinburgh\u2019s backs and attack coach, who suggested that defensive lapses are the team\u2019s big work-on from last weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess everyone was quite frustrated with that performance [at the weekend],\u201d he added. \u201cWe made some uncharacteristic errors I would say, and it\u2019s always gut-wrenching after pre-season where we really felt we\u2019re in a good place.<\/p>\n `\u201dThere\u2019s some really good stuff that we\u2019re doing. So, [it is] disappointing but this team is a team that has faced that type of adversity [before], they\u2019ve been really resilient and they\u2019ve shown that we can bounce back.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we pride ourselves on our defence and I think we just made some uncharacteristic errors which allowed them to inroads into us. But there has been progress made. We have a tight group here that has gone through a lot and has come out the other side.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see this as just another test on where we\u2019ll perform and where we\u2019ll bounce back. I definitely feel that and I think it\u2019s a collective feel around our training in the off-season, our pre-season.\u201d<\/p>\n Mathie stated that a decision will be made on Tuesday about whether stand-offs Ross Thompson<\/strong> and Cammy Scott<\/strong> are ready to return from the toe and hamstring injuries, respectively, which kept them out of last weekend\u2019s game. He also indicated that tight-head prop Paul Hill<\/strong> should be available to face Ulster after a minor calf issue at the weekend.<\/p>\n Edinburgh beat Ulster 47-17 at Hive Stadium in the final regular game of last season to book their place in the URC play-offs, and also faced the Northern Irishmen in a pre-season friendly in Belfast three weeks ago, so the two sides will have a fair idea of what to expect from each other.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want to show everything in your first game but we definitely got a good look at each other a few weeks back, so there\u2019s some things there that we\u2019ve seen,\u201d acknowledged Mathie. \u201cWe also played them in the last game of last season so I think it works both ways, but there\u2019s definitely a lot that we\u2019ve taken notice of.<\/p>\n \u201cThat last game in the URC shows you if you stick to the game model and you\u2019re really accurate in what you do and how you want to go about the game that day, you get rewarded. So it\u2019s a real good lesson and learning for us to be really accurate when it comes to that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always pressure,\u201d he added. :\u2019Every game we go into you want to win so when you do lose it\u2019s always a disappointment regardless of who you play. I think they\u2019ve created that expectation amongst themselves because they have high standards and we want to perform in every game. It\u2019s no different than any other weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The return of Graham, who missed the start of the season with an ankle injury he suffered playing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,85185,1102,10753,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-461973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-divi","10":"tag-edinburgh","11":"tag-edinburgh-rugby","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115290939547909698","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461973","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=461973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}