Edinburgh plunged to their seventh successive defeat tying the club’s record low and their fourth to the Cardiff Blues this season as the Welsh side won with something to spare in their Magners League clash at an echoing Murrayfield on Friday night.
In front of their smallest crowd of the season, the ailing capital club took until deep into injury time to breach the Blues defence, which blitzed effectively just as their national side did in the Six Nations three weeks ago at the same venue.
Tim Visser’s league-leading 12th try of the season came far too late to do anything other than claim a losing bonus point as a first-half try by Chris Czekaj and Leigh Halfpenny’s accurate kicking had taken the Blues to a position of comfort, adding the league double to their successes in the Heineken Cup.
The visitors were clearly the better side from the outset with eight internationalists starting the game, but Edinburgh took the best part of an hour to click into their best rugby only when they were already well adrift.
There were good showings from the returning Simon Webster and the physical young flanker David Denton, but the capital club are an outfit that look short on confidence at the moment.
Interim head coach Nick Scrivener, however, believes it is execution and not confidence where his side are falling down.
“We had the confidence to take the game to them in the second half, it was simply our errors in the first half that cost us,” he said.
Edinburgh rode their luck for the first half-hour, but it seemed only a question of time until the Blues broke through and so it proved.SignificantHalfpenny dropped a simple inside pass from Martyn Williams with the line opening up before him and Webster’s most significant action of the half was a try-saving tackle to force Richard Mustoe into touch.
Incredibly, Edinburgh, with next to no attacking ball, could have had the lead when they got a penalty for offside at a maul, but David Blair couldn’t find his accuracy from a tight angle and Halfpenny broke the deadlock with a straightforward penalty strike.
Just before half-time Edinburgh had an attacking platform with a lineout, but the throw was missed and Cardiff quickly turned it into the most decisive attack of the half with strong running from their big forwards.
Edinburgh appeared to have scrambled it to safety again as they fell back to their line but Casey Lualala made ground and his offload gave full-back Czekaj room to go over by the posts, Halfpenny adding the extras.
The home side’s best two attacks of the half had floundered on Williams’ predatory skills at a breakdown, but the former Wales captain was penalised early in the second half, giving Blair the chance to put his side on the scoreboard.
However, Halfpenny was able to stretch the Blues away and safe with two further penalties, the home fans howling with indignation at the second award when Tim Visser was penalised for shoving Tom Slater when the scrum-half was preventing Edinburgh taking a quick drop out.
Edinburgh responded with a penalty from Blair before both he and Halfpenny missed further penalties as Edinburgh tried to open out defiantly-but it wasn’t until added time that powerful running from Netani Talei and Webster made room for Visser to smash through for an unconverted try.
Attendance 1776.
Edinburgh J Thompson; S Webster, B Cairns, J King, T Visser; D Blair, G Laidlaw (capt); L Niven, A Kelly (A Walker 74), G Cross (D Young 68); E Lozada, S Turnbull (S MacLeod 57) ; D Denton, S Dewar (S Newlands 50), N Talei.
Cardiff Blues C Czekaj; L Halfpenny, C Laulala (G Evans 75), D Hewitt, R Mustoe; C Sweeney (G Davies 69), T Slater; J Yapp (F Filise 60), Rhys Thomas (S Hobbs 68), S Andrews (G Williams 68); D Jones (M Paterson 19), P Tito; M Molitika (A Pretorious 55), M Williams, X Rush.
Referee D Wilkinson (IRFU).