Bumper Crowd Set for Murrayfield Re-Match

A Murrayfield crowd of more than 30,000 will watch Edinburgh Rugby attempt to exact revenge in the second leg of the 1872 Cup.

Glasgow Warriors won the first leg 24-12 in front of 21,093 at Hampden Park last Saturday, with replacement hooker Seb Stephen sealing the win and a bonus point with their fourth try three minutes from time.

Now the two arch rivals will meet again in Saturday’s Vodacom URC Christmas rematch at the home of Scottish rugby.

Setting the scene, Edinburgh coach Sean Everitt said: “I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to motivate the boys.

“The guys are used to coming back in the second game at home.

“It’s quite a big deficit, when you look at derbies, to make up. That’s why that last try hurt us a bit. But we’ll be motivated to get a good win and make sure we contest the 1872 Cup.”

Reflecting on his team’s performance at Hampden, Everitt said: “I thought the boys were brave defensively.

“There was a lot of fight in our defence to keep them out in the first half.

“At half-time, the game was anyone’s to be won. We then spent the majority of the second half in their 22, but just couldn’t get over the line.

“We had opportunities, but weren’t accurate enough there.

“Credit to Glasgow for how they defended, but we also need to be better in that area of the field.

“I’m proud of the boys, but we need to do more when we’ve got the ball and it’s something we’ll look at this week.

“If I look at the defensive effort and the physicality, I thought we were right up there with the fight that the guys showed, but you can’t win a game on that alone.

“You have to fire some shots from an attack point of view and it didn’t work out for us. I thought we contained them really well at times, but you need to score points too.”

Echoing this assessment, Edinburgh scrum half Ben Vellacott said: “Fair play to Glasgow, when they got into our 22, they executed and came away with points. Us, on the other hand, we got in there and we didn’t execute.

“When you get into the 22, if you don’t come away with points, you’re going to get punished and that’s what happened.

“Obviously we were really disappointed. I can’t fault our fight in defence. That was absolutely awesome, but we just gave them too many opportunities to get into our half and, against a side like Glasgow, you can’t do that.

“The game was played at a pretty feisty intensity. On to the next one now.”

Giving his thoughts, Glasgow coach Franco Smith said: “It was a massive, hard-fought victory. I was obviously very grateful for the win.

“We expected Edinburgh to be up for the challenge and they proved it. They applied themselves and played really well, from a defensive perspective specifically.

“They were very physical and didn’t miss a tackle. They made 253 tackles I think, 156 before half-time, which is a big number.

“That was a huge compliment to their heart. They can be proud of the way they stopped us.

“But I was also proud that our boys stuck to the task. They didn’t get discouraged by the good effort and defence from Edinburgh.”

Looking ahead to the Murrayfield rematch, Smith said:

“I don’t think I need to motivate the boys much. They realise how important it is to roll out our best performance.

‘It’s a derby and there’s more to playing this game than there is to us playing any other team.”