Edinburgh - Part 1

I'm an Embra boy, born and bred and whilst I may have moved to the Borders 15yrs ago I am still first and foremost an Edinburgher.  I love coming home, even driving through the city at 6pm on a Friday night - it's a wonderful wonderful city full of so much history, culture and some of the best pubs in the world.  My first rugby memories are all wrapped around rugby in the city, going to watch Embra at Myerside against touring sides or the other district sides.  Watching some of my heroes like Andy Irvine - even though he was a nail - Bruce Hay - the Bear - I loved watching Embra.

They always played a brand of rugby that is to my core how I loved to play the game - open, loose and always willing to give it a go.  It might not have always been successful but it was fun to watch.  Part of the thrill of watching Embra is sometimes it was your muckers from your rugby club playing for them, or guys you mixed with after games and even though many of the side were Nails or Sonians you could at least come together to play the Weegies, South or North and Midlands.  This bond is important, it's one of the few things football sides get right in Scotland - they understand the link to the community, how important it is, how it helps and protects the team/club in times of strife and to share glory with the people that support you, well there is surely no better feeling. 

This bond was always there in the past, understandably so as the side were full of the same people who were watching them from the touchline - but it's gone now.   Some may argue that it's another victim of professionalism, but I disagree - all the Irish provinces cherish and nurture their links to the community, English and French clubs are very much the centre of many of their communities - but in Scotland it's gone.  Whilst a good rant about how crap we were in dealing with the transition to professionalism will no doubt appear on this blog in the months to come, my anger and frustration at the moment is Edinburgh and what is being done to the side I grew up watching.

For the sake of brevity I shall focus on the last 3 years as the issues surrounding my anger at what is happening has reached its zenith.  While it’s not exactly a “where were you when Kennedy was shot” moment (glinting in my old man’s eye is the answer) I still remember hearing the announcement of the new Edinburgh coach in May 2011.  I was astonished, bewildered but most of all very very angry –  I am a rugby nerd, perfect capable of boring a New Zealander to death with my thoughts on the game, one of the consequences of this nerdism is you tend to keep an eye on what is happening in rugby beyond the narrow focus of your club and country.  Since professionalism, Ireland has produced 2 coaches – Eddie O’Sullivan (EOS) whose main claim to fame was erroneously accusing Nathan Hines of choking Ronan O’Gara (who amongst us would not have had a sneaky wee grasp of his scrawny throat should the opportunity arise mind)  and Michael Bradley. 

Neither were up to much, but at least EOS won the odd Triple Crown – he was probably better known as coaching sides that choked and being such a conservative selector you would have needed to lose a leg to get dropped at times.  Michael Bradley’s claim to coaching fame was, erm mmm – OK, even with the benefit of Google I am struggling to think of something.  Quite why the SRU thought this man who had been sacked by Connacht was the right man for the job is something I have thought long and hard about and this is the best I can come up with; McKie the much disliked former CEO of the SRU last act in the job was appointing Bradley.  Told you I was struggling, it says something that the only rational reason for Bradley’s appointments was spite – but I wouldn't put it past McKie.

Since the appalling experiment with the Carruthers brothers, Andy Robinson really turned Edinburgh around.  Our second place finish in 2008/9 was our best ever finish in the league and Robinson seemed to blend the best of Edinburgh – loose open back play with a solid set piece.   Edinburgh played its best rugby in a style we were all happy with.

Rob Moffat is technically a superb coach, but his bizarre selection practices allied with increasingly poor results meant his time as head coach was limited.

And so we reach the Bradley era – I still shudder at the idea of it.  I mentioned earlier that I am a rugby nerd – I knew exactly how hopeless this man was, sadly the men in charge of the SRU then and now are not rugby nerds.  Bradley was lucky that his 3^rd proper match in charge was against the equally hapless Connacht, the side he used to coach with equal aplomb.  In his second match in charge he conspired to lose to Aironi – a result that told of dark days ahead.  By the time the Heineken Cup (HEC) started Edinburgh were 2 from 5 – but to be fair to Bradley, one of those victories was against Munster.

So, onto the HEC – when the group was announced in the summer of 2011, I couldn't believe our luck – a group of 4 very ordinary sides and because of the ranking system the ERC used Cardiff were still living off their SF of a few years previously.  Cardiff were in rapid decline that season and we were in luck.  We started the campaign well and beat London Irish away from home and then a bizarre match at home against Racing Metro saw us win by one point in a game that had 95 points scored.  The next two games tend to be where Embra fall away in past tournaments and right enough we rolled over in Cardiff and got our tummy rubbed – a pathetic 25-8 defeat to Cardiff said a great deal about this Edinburgh side – but they bounced back the following week and beat Cardiff, but foolishly allowing them a LBP.

Whilst all this Euro tomfoolery was going on it was masking the fact that come the derby matches against Glasgow, we had only won 4 Pro 12 matches and bear in mind we had played Aironi twice.  Bradley then did something that in my opinion should have had his bosses chapping at his door – he basically threw the two matches against Glasgow by resting players – his focus was going to be the HEC, but this was a the Weegies.  I was furious, but sadly the sycophants in the Scottish press did their usual and barely a peep was heard from them.  Edinburgh duly lost the 1872 trophy again and by the time the 13^th week of the Pro 12 season ended in January, Edinburgh were 4 from 13, but never mind that – the bread and circuses of the HEC was keeping the press and more delusional fans happy.

Phil Godman (World Class Phil, WCP) dropped a goal in the last minute in Paris and bizarrely Edinburgh needed only 4pts in the next home match to reach the QFs for only the second time in their history – 5pts could see us with a home semi depending on how Cardiff do.  Edinburgh duly defeated a lamentable London Irish and Cardiff could only manage a 4pt win and so Edinburgh were going to be playing Toulouse in the QFs at Murrayfield.

Bugger!! I had loftily declared to my son that we would not be going to watch Edinburgh again with Bradley in charge – but this was an HEC QF, my son then took to asking me almost daily – never mind we had 2 months to go before I had to make a decision.

The Pro 12 then restarted and Edinburgh continued their appalling league form – we didn't win another Pro 12 match until the 30^th March 2012 – they went from the 2^nd December 2011 until the 30^th March before they won another match.  Never mind we the HEC QF coming up and the marketing bods were in full frenzy mode – 2 weeks to go before the big day I relented and bought tickets for myself, son and his friends.

It was a great day, even though Murrayfield was half full you didn't notice this in the East Stand – it was a fantastic day and even a grumpy old git like me was grinning from ear to ear with the victory.
  

The week after the win to Toulouse we shipped 54pts to Leinster – there we have it, our season in stark focus – another pathetic result a week later was ignored as we had an HEC SF to play – the whole season would hinge on the Semi Final against Ulster, or would it?  Bradley was being lauded, the purse strings were being opened and he was clearly here to stay.  Yet he had won more matches in the HEC than the Pro 12.

The semi-final unfolded as predicted – Bradley’s coaching weaknesses were to the fore and he had us playing a conservative gameplan that resulted in us only showing what we could do until the last 10mins.  We were out but my god Bradley was proud of what we had done – only the second ever HEC QF and the first ever SF remember – he made sure everyone knew it, this is a man whose meagre coaching talents had kept him in pretty much constant employment – he was good at manipulating the press and lets face it, it doesn't take much to butter up a Scottish rugby hack.

It’s worth taking stock of the whole HEC campaign as Bradley’s supporters hold it up as proof of his coaching excellence.  Edinburgh were merely the least rubbish of 4 rubbish teams and yes they were certainly better than Toulouse on the day, it was just another of the long line of one off Scottish victories.  The HEC run masked so many problems with Edinburgh – the players could raise themselves for individual matches but were utterly incapable of any sort of consistency – it wasn't helped by them playing with no discernable gameplan – there was no Bradley way of playing, every match seemed to be on a wing and a prayer.

Because the SRU CEO knows as much about rugby as Miley Cyrus he thought this would be the time to open the purse strings and suddenly Bradley was given more money than any Edinburgh coach had previously been given.  Think of a 13yr old in a sweetie shop – he’s still at the cusp of adulthood, but deep down he’s a kid and still loves sweets – well compound that by having the same 13yr old stumbling out the sweetie shop in a near diabetic coma only to stumble into a porn magazine shop.  I am sorry for the rather tortuous analogy but that is how Bradley behaved – as soon as the hapless Dodson told him to spend, he went mental.  He seemed to hoover up every available player, regardless of their Scottish qualification or talent – it was all about volume.

From May 2011 to July 2012 he signed ten non Scottish qualified players (NSQ) .

So what some might say, every good club needs marquee players to make them that bit better – but out of the 10 players signed, everyone was at best a journeyman.  Nothing wrong with a journeyman in a pro side you might say and I would agree – but 10 of them.   And it wasn't as if the squad wasn't in possession of quite a few journeymen to begin with.

But the narrative was, we were supposed to ignore all this – we got to a HEC SF goddamitt.  Everything is going to be grand in the new season, I knew it wasn't and I was no Nostradamus.

The Pro 12 started the same as the previous year and we went into the HEC 2 from 6 – including a defeat at home to Treviso – all was not well, but never mind, we got to a HEC SF goddamitt.

The way the HEC unfolded was a Telegraph hack’s dream – we didn't score a point until the 3^rd match of the competition and that included a truly pathetic gubbing of 0-45 at home to Saracens.  Suddenly Bradley’s bubble burst – at last the sycophants in the press started asking questions.  Edinburgh lost every game in that season’s HEC campaign and there was no Pro 12 to fall back on as they were just as bad as the previous year in that tournament.

By the second week of February 2013 Bradley was gone – the catalyst of this was one of his worst appointments, a defence coach called Billy McGinty – I say defence coach in the loosest of terms – McGinty resigned and before we knew it the SRU announced Bradley’s contract would not be renewed.  Gosh, that really told him eh – instead of spiriting him out of the city with a one way ticket to Cork, we politely told him he might like to look for a new job come May.  As it turned out both parties realised how daft this was and he was off.  To be replaced by two young Scottish coaches in a temporary capacity, who were nowhere near the list of young Scottish coaches we had all been screaming for years to get involved with pro team coaching.

The whole Bradley era was bewildering – why had he been appointed, what was his coaching philosophy, did he ever watch any of the videos of the players he signed, so many questions so few answers.  At least he was gone – of course the person that oversaw most of this, rubber stamped the signings was still there – whilst Bradley was the most visible sign of the decline of Edinburgh,  Dodson was the man who was clearly out of his depth.