The Champions Cup has reached the knockout stage and that’s what everybody expects to happen in Dublin this weekend – Edinburgh to be knocked out.
It’s Leinster – four-time European Cup winners and eight-time finalists – against the United Rugby Championship’s 13th best team.
Leinster have landed nine bonus-point wins in a row against Edinburgh. They have won every meeting in Dublin in the past 21 years, when Leinster drew a crowd of 1,700 and Edinburgh were known as the Gunners.
For Edinburgh – a mammoth and mortifying 17 points adrift of a United Rugby Championship top-eight play-off place – this is their season now. Lose on Sunday and it’s all over.
The first week of April and it’s all on the line already because they’re not hauling themselves into the top eight at this stage, a minimum target they have so dismally failed to meet.
The backdrop is a mess for Edinburgh. Their fans are angry and confused about head coach Sean Everitt getting a two-year extension to his contract. There was no evidence to support him getting that deal. It came as a shock and has gone down badly.
The team is now languishing in the URC with four wins from 14 games. They’ve beaten Benetton (12th in the table) twice, Scarlets (14th) and the Ospreys (11th). Hardly stellar triumphs. It’s been a lamentable season, a run of failure that has led to three of Everitt’s coaches being removed for next season but not Everitt himself.
They got a last-16 spot by dint of wins over Toulon and Gloucester (encouraging) while getting destroyed 33-0 away to Castres and 63-10 away to Bath (embarrassing).
So, while this is a game to prolong their season, it’s difficult to see how they survive away to a side that has eight Test Lions in the starting line-up, an 88-cap All Black, Rieko Ioane, in the midfield, a winger in Tommy O’Brien who scored twice against Scotland at the Aviva last month and a centre in Jamie Osborne, who also scored against Scotland plus Italy, England and Wales to boot.
You could have thrown a World Cup winner in there as well, but the mountainous lock RG Snyman is injured.