The wheels on the bus go round and round. For Edinburgh’s rugby players they birled round and round all the way from Llanelli back to Auld Reekie at the weekend. A posse of rugby boys on a coach for nearly nine hours? One assumes there would be the kind of indulgence usually reserved for Roman emperors. “It was just water and protein bars,” said Lewis Carmichael with a wry grin. “The guys were just playing cards in the back. It was good to chill out.”
The impact of Storm Dennis meant an enforced road trip as Edinburgh’s flight from south Wales was cancelled following their hard-earned and vital victory over Scarlets last weekend.
The weather did not blow the Murrayfield men off course and Richard Cockerill’s team will look to cement their place at the top of their PRO14 table against Connacht tomorrow night before another big encounter with Cardiff.
“As a club we had targeted these three games, they are massive for us,” said 24-year-old lock Carmichael. “In this conference we know we want to be secure in that first place and we need to be winning these games to do that.”
Like the Edinburgh team as a whole, Carmichael has been getting into his stride of late.
“I’m getting there with each game,” said Carmichael who has had injuries to contend with. “I never like to think that I’m the finished article yet but each game I feel like I’m getting more into my rhythm. I’m moving in the right direction.”
Carmichael’s Edinburgh team-mate, Mark Bennett, is also relishing his chance to get some game time under his belt even if the battle of attrition at sodden, windswept Scarlets was a grisly old affair.
“I played 70 minutes, made two tackles, didn’t touch the ball and ran 6k, I was pretty much watching the game,” he said with a grimace.
“But I think I’ve played more rugby this year than I have the last three combined. It’s been good fun. It’s huge to be in a rhythm. The biggest thing was pre-season. I got a full pre-season under my belt, got a good block of training in and I felt I hit the ground running at the start of the season.
"I started it really well and I’ve just built that confidence up again. I’m feeling more like me on the park now rather than over-thinking on the pitch. I’m just going out and doing what I do.”
In a competitive conference, Edinburgh’s rise to the summit has been impressive but, according to Bennett, not surprising. “We’ve not tried to re-write the game, we’ve just done the basics really well,” he added.
“That’s something we have done the last couple of seasons but I think we are doing them better now. We have played some great rugby, had some great wins and maybe wins we may not have had a couple of years ago.”
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