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Edinburgh turn a one-point interval lead into a bonus win at Zebre

By PA
(Photo by Paul Devlin/SNS Group via Getty Images)

Edinburgh pulled clear in the second half to earn a hard-fought 27-10 bonus-point victory over Zebre Parma in the United Rugby Championship. Having fallen behind to a Pierre Bruno try in Italy, the visitors led 8-7 at half-time thanks to a Jack Blain score before Stuart McInally, Boan Venter and Ben Vellacott added their names to the scoresheet after the break.

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The result moves Edinburgh, who also benefited from seven points from the boot of Blair Kinghorn, to the top of the Scottish/Italian Shield ahead of the international break, sitting three points ahead of Glasgow after five rounds. Zebre, meanwhile, remain without a victory since February and are rock bottom of the overall URC standings.

Back in the Edinburgh side following a quad injury, Kinghorn opened the scoring from the tee after four minutes, but it was Zebre who registered the game’s first try. A perfectly weighted 50:22 from Carlo Canna gave the hosts a lineout on the Edinburgh five-metre line and they spread the ball out to the left for Bruno to find a gap in the defence and go over, with Canna adding the extras.

Mike Blair’s men, who last weekend beat the Bulls, responded shortly after the half-hour mark when they showed quick hands to move the ball right – cleverly helped along by Kinghorn, who took a heavy hit from Junior Laloifi for his efforts – and Blain finished the job.

Kinghorn dusted himself down but missed the conversion, leaving Edinburgh with a one-point advantage at half-time. Both sides struggled for fluency early in the second half, but Edinburgh stretched their lead when McInally touched down from the back of a maul.

The margin stayed within a converted try at 13-7 as Kinghorn was again unsuccessful from the tee, although he was on target after Venter barged through for Edinburgh’s third score, with Zebre having been reduced to 14 men following a yellow card for Jimmy Tuivaiti.

Antonio Rizzi stepped off the bench to reduce the deficit to ten with his boot, but Vellacott finished the job with his fourth try of the season, spotting an opportunity to dive over in the corner at the death after Edinburgh had got within inches of the line and leaving Kinghorn to round off the scoring.

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J
JW 1 hour ago
Why England's defence of the realm has crumbled without Felix Jones

This piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.


I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.


Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.


The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.

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