Blair: “We just lacked a bit of precision under pressure.”

• 30 Jan 2023
• Reactions

Get media reaction from Head Coach Mike Blair following Saturday’s narrow loss to Cell C Sharks in the BKT United Rugby Championship.

On the match and how Edinburgh battled to the final minutes

 “I am proud, proud of a lot of the effort and the commitment.

“We just lacked a bit of precision under pressure, not throughout the 80 mins, but during certain periods which was frustrating but we played the last twelve minutes with Jaco in the back-row.

“We were decision-making on the hope over what we could do at line out time. Proud of the effort but happier if we got the win.”

On battling back in the match and scoring 19 unanswered points

“Playing against the Sharks you know they will come at you with a lot of line-speed and put you under pressure and we did not handle that quite as well as we could.

“We gave sharks a bit of field position but then the 20th to 40th minute we broke the game up getting counter attacks and some turnover ball when the sharks were not as well set and we scored a couple of cracking tries.

“I am trying to get the balance right. I am disappointed not to get the win but pleased with large parts of that performance.

“Murray McCallum had not played since the Barbarians game, Adam had not played for three months and Boan has not played for the last three weeks.

“Glen has not played since the Glasgow game so we had a lot of guys coming back. It maybe took them a bit of time to get back into it, but I am proud of a lot of things we did.”

On not scoring any points in the second-half

“They kicked a lot more in the second half with a very slight breeze which meant we could not get our broken-field runs going.

“We missed a few opportunities on the blind side and were slow to see them reset. If you are a heartbeat off it, that is when the Sharks shut you down.”