{"id":649701,"date":"2025-12-23T04:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/649701\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T04:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:56:10","slug":"johnny-ventisei-could-play-for-edinburgh-against-hometown-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/649701\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnny Ventisei could play for Edinburgh against hometown club"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cammy Scott<\/strong> (primarily a stand-off) and Wes Goosen<\/strong> (primarily a full-back) have played in midfield previously, while Matt Davidson<\/strong> has been drafted back into the squad from the TeamGB Sevens programme<\/a>, but head coach Sean Everitt<\/strong> didn\u2019t rule out the possibility that Ventisei could be thrown in at the deep-end against the club where he has been on a full-time academy contract since the start of the 2023-24 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s definitely an option,\u201d said Everitt. \u201cObviously, we\u2019ve got Matt Davidson back, who trained with us in the pre-season, was involved in the URC warm-up games as well, and took part in the game against Cardiff off the bench, so it made sense to bring him straight back in after his two sevens tournaments because he\u2019s familiar.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohnny only joined us the Friday before. He\u2019s a youngster, and he\u2019s still learning our calls now and our systems. So he might be a candidate to be in the 23 this week. He\u2019s on a loan until the end of January.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere won\u2019t be anyone rested this week, put it that way. Obviously, we\u2019ve got quite a lot of injuries in the midfield, and sometimes injuries hit you in the same place. It\u2019s been the case since I\u2019ve been here, whether it be in the back-three or the midfield or in the second-row.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been decimated in the midfield at the moment\u00a0\u2013 but we\u2019ve got options, believe it or not, so we\u2019re not dead and buried.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everitt conceded after the loss at Hampden that his team needed to make improvements fast if they are to turn around a 12-point deficit in order to claim the 1872 Cup this season, and he stressed that having Christmas right in the middle of the week will not disrupt his team\u2019s preparation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll still have our three sessions of preparation, as we normally do. We just shuffle the days differently so that the players can be with their families on Christmas Day, which is a Thursday this year, so it does make it a little bit more difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t change how we\u2019re going to prepare and train. We\u2019ll still have the same amount of hours. We need some time to sort out a few things, as we spoke about earlier, but looking forward to Christmas week.\u201d<\/p>\n

With hooker Ewan Ashman<\/strong> also suffering a concussion, and winger Duhan van der Merwe<\/strong> a doubt with a hip injury, Edinburgh could have as many as 20 squad members unavailable for this weekend match.<\/p>\n

Hooker could also become a pinch point. Paddy Harrison <\/strong>has been missing in recent weeks with a back injury and hasn\u2019t played since the start of the Autumn Test window but could come back this week, while Dylan Richardson<\/strong> was signed in the summer as a No 2 but has only played No 7 since missing the start of the season with his own back injury. That means 21-year-old academy man Jerry Blyth-Lafferty<\/strong> (who hasn\u2019t previously played at this level) might end up being the next cab off the rank as understudy to Harri Morris.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The players missing last week were:<\/strong>\u00a0Charlie 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), James Lang (shoulder), Ross McCann (concussion), Jack Brown (concussion), Ross McKnight (ankle).<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cammy Scott (primarily a stand-off) and Wes Goosen (primarily a full-back) have played in midfield previously, while Matt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,85185,1102,10753,8979,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-649701","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-glasgow-warriors","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115767108234700296","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649701","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=649701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}