By Whaley Shark
August 20 2011

 So the days are getting shorter, there’s dew on the grass in the morning, and after what seems like an age-long rugby famine, the Whaley Shark popped down to EP to get a first glimpse of Steve Diamond’s Revolution in action. 

This isn’t a proper report, more a first, general impression of how things are shaping up, and a few specific comments about players who caught my eye.  With a fortnight to go before the Premiership kicks off in earnest, and so many new faces, you wouldn’t necessarily expect a fluid, all-action display; perhaps the best you’d hope for is a bit of knocking off the rough edges, and that’s rather what we saw.  It’s difficult to know just what this game’s significance is as well, because we don’t know its purpose, or what the players have been told is wanted. Also, I don’t know enough about Edinburgh to judge our opponents’ strength.

Anyway, enough of the prevarications- looking at the performance as a whole, I felt the positives were a willingness to keep the ball in hand and alive, our rather makeshift pack scrummaged better than I had feared they might, we rolled a couple of mauls well, and we did pick up four tries.  For me, our defensive lapses were the principal weakness. Edinburgh ran hard at gaps and got through on a number of occasions, whereas we seemed often to lack penetration. I also hope we have something up our sleeves as far as the lineout is concerned.

Moving on to individuals, four really caught my eye-

David Seymour reminded me how much we’d missed him last season- he covered a lot of ground, won loose ball, made some vital tackles, and it was nice to see a traditional bit of corner-flagging in defence.

Vadim Cobilas seemed to cope OK in the tight, and showed some really classy touches in the loose. A prop who can sidestep and offload could be rather useful.

Luther Burrell made a couple of nice breaks and almost nabbed himself a try. Hopefully a preview of what is to come from him.

Tommy Taylor wasn’t overawed by his debut and took his try well, beating the fringe defence to dive through a yawning gap

I’ll be there next week to take another look, but I guess we won’t really know where we stand until the Prem gets under way. Not long now......