A fair wind – and something other than the skies emptying – will see Edinburgh’s real potential on Friday night against Leinster, believes Phil Burleigh.
The Kiwi inside centre says that “the structures are in place” for Edinburgh to open out rather than play a 10-man game – it’s just the weather in their opening two games has been dreadful and not allowed them to.
Given the inevitable if silly comparisons with Glasgow, who have scored 10 tries in their first two games of the new Guinness PRO12 season, Burleigh thinks the crucial difference has been conditions.
“Glasgow have had a couple of dry games, and we haven’t,” he pointed out. “They do play a different style to what you’ve seen for us in the past couple of weeks, but if we get a dry night on Friday you will see a different team.
“Looking at the conditions last Friday, we had to play that way. It was one of those games where you couldn’t throw the ball around, those balls like a bar of soap when it rains.
“I think we did very well in those conditions. We certainly played them better than the Scarlets did.”
Criticism of Edinburgh’s style hasn’t accounted for the wind and rian in Cardiff on the opening weekend and at BT Murrayfield last week, he added.
“We have some very astute footballers and they dictate how we play in those tougher conditions,” he said. “Last Friday might not have been what people want to see but that’s the way it had to happen to win the game. The right guys stepped up and made the right calls.
“We do have a style game we would like to play in dry conditions and I think you will see it on Friday, as the forecast is pretty good.”
Burleigh has switched back to his preferred position at 12 having run the team from 10 for much of last season.
“It’s the position where I’ve played most of my rugby so I’m back at home there and feel good and it’s easy playing outside Duncan Weir,” he said. “He makes it easy by putting the ball in the right places and I don’t have to do a lot of kicking any more.
“My focus now is on playing 12. Obviously, Jason (Tovey) is injured at the moment and if there are injuries I could have to step up into the role but Blair Kinghorn is here as well and he’s a very good young player and he’ll get his chance.
“Having that depth there in that position is huge; we’ve probably lacked that in the last couple of years so it’s nice to have options.”
Leinster impressed for long periods against Glasgow at Scotsotun and expect to bring back two or three of their Ireland internationalists.
“They’re a good team, there’s no question,” added Burleigh. “We’re going to have to be on top of our game and the coaching staff have had a busy weekend taking apart their game at Scotstoun.
“The young stand-off Joe Carbery has been getting good reports, he’s a young fellow on the rise and being talked about, but we’re not worried about individuals.
“They have some good individual players, but they play as a team. They are pretty structured, but we know who we want to target at the weekend.”
Edinburgh’s defence will need to be up to the job, but after shutting out Scarlets’ much vaunted backs from crossing the try-line, they have nothing to fear.
“Defence is where we lacked a bit of impetus in Cardiff so we worked really hard on it during the week,” added Burleigh. “It came up trumps, and that’s what won us the game, even with 14 men for a long spell.”
