Edinburgh could book their place in the last eight of the European Challenge Cup if they beat Stade Francais in Paris tonight, but head coach Duncan Hodge just wants to see some consistency of performance – preferably in the same game.
The capital side’s Jekyll and Hyde – or should that be Hyde and Jekyll – performance in the meeting with the Parisians on Saturday had Hodge tearing out what remains of his hair, but the interim head coach thinks that valuable lessons have been learned.
Eight changes have been made in the side, with only one enforced. Phil Burleigh will serve a one-match ban for his seconding off for “striking” the face of Pascal Pape in Saturday’s game, the bare minimum that could have be applied under the regulations by yesterday’s disciplinary panel.
Pape was yesterday given an official warning – the equivalent of a retrospective yellow card – by the citing commissioner for his theatrical reaction to the “blow”, which has brought condemnation from all over the world of rugby.
However the Stade captain will play tonight in what looks like the strongest possible team, with Italy captain Sergio Parisse and French international stand-off Jules Plisson among those recalled, but the majority of Hodge’s changes are to do with player welfare.
“They’re a big physical team and it’s hard with just a five-day turnaround plus travel added in,” he said. “We had to make some changes, some guys like Grant Gilchrist have had five games in a row.”
Simon Berghan, so effective when he came on in the first match to stabilise the scrum, starts with Ross Ford skippering the side from hooker. Cornell du Preez and Nasi Manu come in to bolster the back row.
Hodge was most concerned on Saturday that his team didn’t adjust quickly enough, requiring the half-time talk to put things to rights.
“It took us 40 minutes to make some changes that should have happened a lot earlier, and I’ve been asking the group why that happened and saying that we have to rectify these problems earlier.
“We had talked about turning them and making their whole pack move around and instead we played a bit in front of them to their strengths.”
But what Hodge wants to see is a general improvement in the team on all fronts.
“We want to fight this season on two fronts, definitely,” he said. “We have a strong enough squad and we’re not carrying many injuries at the moment.
“We just want to win games of rugby. The word consistency keeps coming up, and it doesn’t matter what tournament it is, we want to show that.”
The main positive in Saturday’s turnaround, he agreed, was the response of the team to the deficit they had to overcome and the difficulty of losing Burleigh before it was complete.
“To come back from 17 points down says a lot by itself,” he said.” We were under pressure, but in the second half we made very good decisions and played a lot better.
“After the red card everyone just mucked in and raised their game a bit more.
“I’ve never been involved in a game like that, I’ve seen comeback before obviously but not one where we’ve turned it round with a red card.”
Edinburgh (vs Stade Francais, Stade Jean Bouin, European Challenge Cup, tonight, kick-off 7.45pm GMT) B Kinghorn; D Hoyland, M Alklen, C Dean, T Brown; J Tovey, S Hidalgo-Clyne; A Dickinson, R Ford (capt), S Berghan; F McKenzie, B Toolis; C du Preez, H Watson, N Manu.
Replacements: N Cochrane, A Dell, M McCallum, L Carmichael, V Mata, S Kennedy, D Weir, G Bryce.
