{"id":628860,"date":"2025-12-12T19:47:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/628860\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T19:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:47:24","slug":"sean-everitt-rings-the-changes-for-edinburghs-trip-to-castres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/628860\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Everitt rings the changes for Edinburgh’s trip to Castres"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meanwhile, centre Matt Currie<\/strong> is set to make his first appearance this season having recovered from Vertigo. Youngsters\u00a0Jack Brown<\/strong> (20), wing Lewis Wells<\/strong> (23) and back-row Freddy Douglas<\/strong> (20) are also starters.<\/p>\n

Connor Boyle<\/strong> is named on the bench and is set for his first appearance in over 12 months, having competed his comeback from a long-term knee injury. Fellow openside Hamish Watson<\/strong> is also named among the replacements.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to plan your season in advance to make sure that you\u2019ve got your strongest team available when necessary,\u201d said Everitt. \u201cAt the same time, you\u2019ve got to balance that with developing guys to come through and play at the HIGHEST level and give them experience. The team that we\u2019ve selected, there\u2019s a good mixture, once again, between youth and experience, similar to what we had against Ospreys.<\/p>\n

\u201cJack Brown<\/strong> has now played quite a number of senior games for us and done really well in his position. So we\u2019re looking forward to what he can bring as a back-up to Harry Patterson. They\u2019re very similar in what they can bring \u2013 really strong under the high ball and good in the kicking game. So, yes, there are a lot of changes, but it\u2019s still an experienced team that we have, with bringing through a guy like Ollie as well at tight-head and getting a second start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everitt has been criticised in the past for his apparent reluctance to give young players game-time, but has been pretty bold in his selections in recent weeks. Blyth-Lafferty was given his first appearance a fortnight ago and then his first start last week against a powerful Toulon scrum last Sunday. This week, he has named Mikey Jones<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 a 23-year-old who has only one appearance and five minutes of rugby at this level back in April 2024 to his name \u2013 as replacement loose-head.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came in, these guys were obviously two years younger, which made them very young,\u201d Everitt reasoned. \u201cThey\u2019re now coming of age. Look at Liam [McConnell], how he\u2019s come on in the last two years. What they\u2019re showing me in training is that they\u2019re willing to compete and they\u2019ve learnt a lot from the senior players. They\u2019re challenging the senior players and that for me is pleasing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou also have to reward good performances day-in and day-out at the club. Mikey had that game [for Emerging Scotland] against Tonga<\/a> when he had that great line break down the middle of the field and he also scrummed really well against the big guy Ben Tameifuna.<\/strong> So, yes, it does give me confidence and I think at the same time you\u2019ve got to let these guys play when they\u2019re ready and I believe that they are ready now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect big things from Mikey. He\u2019s got an opportunity now \u2013 he\u2019s worked really hard at his game. We\u2019ve got good competition in that position with Boan Venter, Pierre Schoeman and Mikey as well as James Whitcombe.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a young Ben White<\/strong> coming through as well, so we\u2019re pretty well stocked there. It\u2019s about making sure that they get game-time now and develop, whether it be in \u2018A\u2019 team games, whether it be in club games, or for that matter, \u2018championship\u2019 games like we have this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everitt also revealed that Marhsall Sykes<\/strong> is set to miss the Six Nations with the arm injury he picked up against Toulon last weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarshall is going to undergo surgery on his bicep,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019ll be out for a long period of time. He\u2019s a 10 to12 week injury. It\u2019s unfortunate for a guy that was probably peaking in the season. He\u2019s a massive contributor to our set-piece and our set-piece success that we\u2019ve had. So we\u2019ll miss him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s fortunate for us with the depth that we\u2019ve got in that position. Callum Hunter-Hill<\/strong> gets another opportunity to start, after coming off the bench against Ospreys, so he can build some continuity in that position. And then we\u2019ve got Glen Young<\/strong>, who\u2019s an experienced campaigner at the club, a really good line-out caller and a guy that\u2019s got a high work rate.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, although we\u2019ll miss Marshall, we\u2019ve got some players in place \u2013 although we do have a few injuries further down the line. We\u2019ve got a young Christian Lindsay<\/strong> who injured his shoulder against Tonga, as well as Euan McVie<\/strong>, who will be returning to training next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t be seeing Luke Crosbie<\/strong> back any time soon, Ben Muncaster<\/strong> is mid-January and Sam Skinner<\/strong> is earmarked for the last week of January.\u201d\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Asked about Darcy Graham, Everitt explained: \u201cHe had a bit of a back flare-up last week and he pushed through the game. We just felt for his own personal welfare that he doesn\u2019t play this weekend. If he were 100 percent fit and got through last week\u2019s game without any hitches, he would have been selected this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edinburgh (v Catres @ Stade Pierre-Fabre on Sunday, 1pm GMT\/2pm local-time kick-off \u2013 live on Premier Sports): <\/strong>J Brown; R McCann, M Currie, P O\u2019Conor, L Wells; C Scott, B Vellacott; B Venter, H Morris, O Blyth-Laffety, C Hunter-Hill, G Young, L McConnell, F Douglas, T Dodd. Replacements: <\/strong>E Ashman, M Jones, P Hill, C Boyle, H Watson, C Shiel, J Lang, W Goosen.<\/p>\n

Castres Olympique:<\/strong> G Palis; C Ambadiang, V Botitu, J Goodhue, A Vargas; P Popelin, J Fernandez; Q Walcker, L Zarantonello, A Azar, G Maravat, T Staniforth, B Delaporte (c), T Ardron, A Papalii
Subs:<\/strong> T Durand-Pradere, L Guerois-Galisson, N Corato, L Nakarawa, B Cope, G Doubrere, E Herve, V Karawalevu<\/p>\n

Unavailable for Edinburgh:<\/strong>\u00a0Pierre Schoeman, Duhan van der Merwe, Darcy Graham, Magnus Bradbury, Grant Gilchrist (all rest protocol), Charlie McCaig (knee), Rhys Litterick (achilles), Rob Carmichael (wrist), Mosese Tuipulotu (knee), Tom Currie (knee), Luke Crosbie (hamstring), D\u2019arcy Rae (ankle), Sam Skinner (hamstring), Paddy Harrison (back), Ben Muncaster (knee), Marshall Sykes (arm), Harry Paterson (hamstring), Findlay Thomson (hand)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, centre Matt Currie is set to make his first appearance this season having recovered from Vertigo. Youngsters\u00a0Jack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628861,"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-628860","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\/115708326679104717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628860","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=628860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}