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Edinburgh just about snap 4 game losing streak against Zebre

By PA
Zebre's Franco Smith Jr looks dejected at full time during a United Rugby Championship match between Edinburgh and Zebre Parma at DAM Health Stadium, on January 07, 2023, in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Mark Scates/SNS Group via Getty Images)

Edinburgh brought a run of four BKT United Rugby Championship defeats to an end with a last-minute try from Patrick Harrison helping them to a 24-17 win over Zebre Parma.

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Harrison’s late try enabled Edinburgh to secure the bonus point and get their season back on track.

Charlie Shiel, Jack Blain and Connor Boyle also crossed for the hosts, with Blair Kinghorn adding a pair of conversions.

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Simone Gesi scored a pair of tries for Zebre and Tiff Eden also went over, with Eden adding a conversion.

Zebre, bottom of the table after losing all 11 previous outings, began brightly, only to be thwarted by a home defence in which Sam Skinner was especially effective.

The lock was also an influential figure in attack, and it was his clean catch from a lineout that led to Edinburgh breaking the deadlock just before the end of the first quarter.

The subsequent drive went deep into the Italian 22 before reaching an impasse but Boyle popped up from deep within the melee to feed Shiel, and the scrum-half had just enough space in which to dive over the line in the right corner.

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Kinghorn missed the conversion attempt, but two minutes later, Edinburgh had their second try.

Some steady pressure in midfield put Zebre on the back foot, and eventually number eight Nick Haining broke down the right before providing the scoring pass for Blain.

Zebre lost Gesi to the sinbin for a deliberate knock-on, but ended the half on the offensive, then opened their account early in the second 40 through the winger himself.

Too many Edinburgh defenders had been dragged into central defence as the Zebre attack tried to force their way over the line, and when the ball came back out, the winger had acres of space in which to dot down.

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With half an hour to play, Gesi struck again. Edinburgh failed to defend the narrow side at a lineout, scrum-half Allesandro Fusco broke, and the winger was up in support to collect the pass and slide over. Eden’s second miss left the score tied at 10-10.

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Then, with less than 15 minutes to go, Zebre took the lead thanks to some slack defence. Picking up from the base of a scrum, stand-off Eden slipped through a gap then evaded Harry Paterson to score between the posts before adding the two points.

Edinburgh hit back within a minute. A penalty to touch was driven, and Boyle finished off a simple score. Kinghorn’s conversion made it 17-17.

In the dying minutes the home team were awarded two kickable penalties but went for touch both times only to fail to finish off.

When they got a scrum in front of the posts, however, they did get over the line, with substitute Harrison finishing off. Kinghorn’s drop-kicked conversion was the last kick of the match.

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J
JW 4 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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