'I will take responsibility for my personal errors... I dropped a few balls'

Edinburgh forward Nick Haining admitted his side’s error-strewn display against Ospreys was unacceptable.

Richard Cockerill’s men led early on from a penalty try after a good break down the left but Grant Gilchrist soon followed visiting skipper Justin Tipuric into the sin bin and Ospreys went on to win 25-10.

Edinburgh spilled high balls in the torrential rain, Jaco Van Der Walt missed two first-half penalties and the home side failed to make any inroads whatsoever into the Welsh outfit’s 22 during a second half in which they failed to score any points.

James Hook on All Access

James Hook on All Access

It was a fourth consecutive defeat and Haining insists they were not moping over their disappointing finale to last season when they threw away a semi-final lead over Ulster and then lost in Europe to Bordeaux.

“We can’t make those excuses,” the number eight said. “We are into a new season now, we had the week off, and we put that behind us. We should be hitting the ground running.

“To lose like that, with that many errors, wasn’t good enough. We won’t make any excuses.

“It would have been nice to have a bigger break but it’s the way it is, everybody is in the same boat.

“We had a good pre-season, we had our finals, we had a week off, and there’s no excuses really, we should have been better.

“I will take responsibility for my personal errors. We have made errors in the game that cost us.

“Me personally, I dropped a few balls, we were under pressure in our own half and not exiting.

“We made that many errors, it’s hard to get a foothold in the game. We talked about it after the game and that’s where we let ourselves down.”

Cockerill was already missing several key players such as Jamie Ritchie and Duhan Van Der Merwe and his plans were further disrupted by early injuries to Luke Crosbie (hamstring) and Magnus Bradbury (head).

“It does not help that two of the back-row guys go off early,” Cockerill said.

“The weather conditions were difficult and they controlled them much better than we did.

“We were a bit naive and did not exit out of our own half and put ourselves under pressure.

“There were a couple of missed touches, missed penalties and other parts of it. They controlled the game better. We were not very composed.

“Once they got the lead they stuck the ball at the right end of the field and made us play. We did not have the nous to put them under pressure.”