No 8 Magnus Bradbury says Edinburgh plan to match the Vodacom Bulls at their own game in Saturday’s EPCR Challenge Cup quarter-final at Hive Stadium.
Edinburgh booked their place in the last-eight with a 24-12 home win against the Lions last weekend, while the Bulls beat Bayonne 32-22 in France.
When asked by the media earlier this week if the Scottish club could claim a second successive win against South African opposition, Bradbury said, “Of course we can, 100%.”
He added: “I think we’re in a really good place at the moment. Our game hasn’t changed much, the principles haven’t changed, but we’ve just got a lot better at delivering them.
“Defensively, we’re the strongest we’ve been all season. Against the Lions we made them play where they didn’t want to play. We kept them in the middle of the park and closed them down.
“We know that the Bulls this week is a step up physically, definitely,” Bradbury added. “We know these South African teams, if you go toe to toe with them, if you surprise them with your physicality, then anything can happen.
“So, to answer your question, I fully believe we can beat them.”
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Edinburgh, under head coach Sean Everitt, struggled earlier this season, with the nadir a 55-21 defeat to the Lions at Ellis Park, in which they trailed 48-0 at half time.
Bradbury said they had turned a corner during the Six Nations period, with the players taking greater responsibility for the team’s performances.
“We lost 15 to 20 boys [to international duty] so it was a really small group we had and we delivered each week. We revisited our principles. So it was like a mini pre-season for us. We had six, seven weeks with just that group.
“So, we said to ourselves … we challenged ourselves: ‘When the Scotland boys come back in, it’s going to feel like a different environment’.
“We pushed the coaches a lot. Not that they weren’t giving us an opportunity to speak, but we wanted to change things. We wanted to become more player-led so we had more responsibility with the game plan, so we can then grow ourselves and make it a 50-50 environment rather than the 60-40 that it was before. I think that paid huge dividends.
“Then the Scotland boys came back and they’ve added their own experience. When you’ve got international calibre players delivering on a really strong game plan, a really clear game plan, it can only go from strength to strength.
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“What started it was the Zebre game we lost [22-17 at home],” he added. “Sean said to the media: ‘That’s on me’. And we were like: ‘Nah, it starts with us’.
“It starts with the coaches delivering the game plan but then it’s down to us from probably a Tuesday afternoon onwards. It’s down to the players to review training, to polish things and, ultimately, we’re the ones on the pitch, it’s our responsibility.”
Photo: Euan Cherry/Getty Images
