‘Bit of a dream’: how things clicked for Edinburgh as attack guru reveals key chat with Sean Everitt

Sitting in the away coaching box at the Affidea Stadium in Belfast, he watched his side tear Ulster apart on the opening night of the new United Rugby Championship season.

For the first hour at least, Edinburgh hardly put a foot wrong, scoring four tries as they raced into a 34-5 lead. And although Ulster came back strongly to narrow the winning margin to a mere five points it was still a great start to the campaign for Edinburgh who freshened up their coaching team in the summer by bringing in Sampson, Brad Davis and Michael Hodge to assist Sean Everitt.

Sampson, recruited from the Super Rugby Pacific side Fijian Drua, admitted it was a joy to see all the hard work put in by the players and coaches pay off.

Embracing the game plan

“Yeah, a bit of a dream really,” he smiled. “It's a nine-week pre-season with some new things installed around our framework and how we want to play the game. To go and deliver that for the majority of that game was very pleasing and I'm just happy for the lads.

“They embraced the game plan and what we've been installing. So it was a bit of a dream to see some of the footage we played and breaking it down in the review meeting this morning. It's just the simple things, a big part of the foundations of our attack, which created the opportunities, line breaks.”

One of the main criticisms of Edinburgh in recent seasons has been their stodginess in attack and their inability to get world-class wingers Darcy Graham and Duhan van der Merwe on the ball enough.

Everitt, the club’s head coach, had promised to play a faster brand of rugby this season, more in tune with the way the global game is going. It’s only one game in, but Edinburgh certainly managed to do that in Belfast.

Neither Graham nor ver der Merwe were involved against Ulster due to injury but the back three of Piers O’Conor, Mal Satala and Geordie Gwynn stepped up in their absence, much to the delight of Sampson who had identified the need to get the ball wide.

More width

“One of the early conversations I had with Sean was just to get a bit more width into our attack, which creates more one-on-one opportunities around our ball carriers,” said Sampson, who has worked previously with Western Force and Melbourne Rebels in his native Australia.

“We've got some highly skilled players there and some good athletes through our forwards who can play a little bit wider, so that was the main thing I noticed early on.”

The performance of James Grayson at stand-off was also fundamental to the victory. Grayson joined the club in the close season from Mitsubishi Dynaboars in Japan and was excellent in Belfast, controlling the Edinburgh attack in a way rarely seen in recent seasons.

Ross Thompson still has a big role to play

“James did a great job for us,” said Sampson. “He had, I think, a clear mind on how we want to play the game, but he's around our whole attack philosophy. He's very good around how he wants to drive the team around the field as well, which is important.”

Last season's regular stand-off Ross Thompson wasn’t selected in the 23 on Friday, with Cammy Scott named on the bench as the back-up 10, but Sampson believes all three fly-halves will have a role to play as the season unfolds.

“They're going to have to play a big part for us,” said the coach. “Ross is 27 years old. He's got some experience behind him and he does understand the game quite well. We want that competition, especially in those key positions, and they are competing hard.”

It will be a different challenge this Friday when the Stormers visit Hive Stadium in round two. The South African side also began the season with an away win, a 29-15 victory over Connacht in Galway, something achieved without some of their Springboks who were either involved in the squad for Sunday’s defeat by Australia or recovering from the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series with New Zealand.

Siya Kolisi, the South Africa captain, is part of the Stormers’ tour party and although he didn’t play against Connacht, he may come into the mix for the Edinburgh game. Either way, Sampson expects an extremely physical contest.

“I think they travel with a pretty big squad over the next couple of weeks so they might rotate for us this Friday but yeah, it’s probably a little bit of a different challenge,” he said. “They're a high collision team, I love the physicality but I think we can use that to our advantage as well. We're just going to have to meet them front on with that, fire with fire.”

Edinburgh are hoping to welcome back Scotland front-rowers Pierre Schoeman and Ewan Ashman for the Stormers game. Both were heavily involved with the national side over the summer but should be back in the Edinburgh squad provided they come through training unscathed.

Edinburgh began the season with 17 players on their unavailable list but the hope is that the injury woes will have lessened in time for this week’s game. Sampson also confirmed that Magnus Bradbury and Gwynn are both fine, despite coming off against Ulster early in the second half.

“It's common knowledge that the injury list is quite long,” said the attack coach. “It came out last week but there's a big chunk of guys that were one to two to three weeks away [from being fit] so hopefully we can get a few back out this week which will be important, no doubt.”