He’s hardly in a try drought by anyone else’s standards, but Edinburgh wing Tim Visser doesn’t mind not scoring if Edinburgh win Saturday’s Heineken Cup quarter-final with Toulouse.
The prolific wing, who qualifies for Scotland in June, has an astonishing 16 tries in all competitions this season.
That puts him top of the European scoring charts and is a new personal best, but ‘Vis’ has just two tries in his last six games.
With four in the Heineken Cup so far, he’s aiming to add some more in front of Edinburgh’s record crowd as they aim to reach the last four.
“I’ve said a few times that I’d rather win games than score tries, and so as long as we’re winning I don’t mind who scores,” said the Dutchman.
“We know we’re going to have to score a few to beat Toulouse and it is good to see other people score, mainly because we’re getting wins through that.
“The times where I’ve been the only one scoring hasn’t necessarily been times where we’ve won the game.”Stopping Toulouse the focusVisser is proudly aware however of his stats this year, and his growing reputation.
“I’ve got 16 tries now, past last year’s record in total, and four is the most I’ve ever scored in the Heineken Cup.
“When we get back into the Rabo I’ll be looking to get past last year’s league record.”
He added: “If anything, though, the task this week is to stop Toulouse scoring tries.
“We have seen that they are one of the best counter-attacking teams in the world, so that’s our biggest focus stopping them and hopefully picking up some points on the way.”
The return of the Scotland players last week saw Edinburgh win for the first time since their group clincher against London Irish in January, and a boost to the squad.
Visser said: “Last week wasn’t as good as it could have been but it was still a huge step up from when the guys were away.
“We’ve shown away to London Irish and Racing Metro that we can stop good teams scoring.
“Our strength is attacking but we have to strike a balance and we don’t want to get into another situation like the home Racing Metro game when we had to score 48 points to win, but then again we can do that if we have to.”‘One of the biggest teams in the world’Visser may be set for many big matches when he goes as expected straight into the Scotland squad this summer but he’s in no doubt of the significance of this game.
He said: “This is the biggest game I have ever played in for Edinburgh so far. To get to the later stages of the Heineken Cup is incredible.
“A home quarter-final was something we couldn’t have wished for at the start. We were looking just to get out of a tough pool.
“Toulouse have shown that they are hugely competitive in this competition, and that they can win it.
“They’re easily one of the biggest teams in the world so it’s going to be challenging.”
He added: “They have some of the best players in the world, though I wouldn’t necessarily say they were the best team in the world at this moment because although they have a lot of good individuals they don’t necessarily play that well together.
“That’s something that we’re focusing on and keeping in the back of our mind, and if we’re accurate and play better as a team I think we’ve got a very good chance.”
Photo by Lynne Cameron/PA Archive