Duncan Hodge bemoans sloppy start as Edinburgh lose against La Rochelle
Duncan Hodge bemoaned a sloppy start after his Edinburgh side fell 32-22 to French league leaders La Rochelle in the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals at BT Murrayfield.
Duncan Hodge bemoaned a sloppy start after his Edinburgh side fell 32-22 to French league leaders La Rochelle in the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals at BT Murrayfield.
Edinburgh conceded two near-identical tries from five-metre lineouts in the opening 12 minutes, hooker Jeremie Maurouard crossing both times, before a poor attempt at a challenge from Blair Kinghorn allowed visiting scrum-half Arthur Retiere to cross.
More trickery from Retiere set up Steeve Barry to open up a 19-point gap after Edinburgh failed to capitalise on some pressure.
Edinburgh fought back well and both Ross Ford and Hamish Watson crossed before Duncan Weir's penalty reduced the arrears to just four points.
But the hosts failed to take advantage of a yellow card for visiting replacement Lekso Kaulashvili and two late penalties put the tie beyond them.
Acting head coach Hodge said: We gave ourselves a lot to do.
Everything we talked about during the week, in terms of discipline and no easy entries into our 22, when we had the ball the first three times we coughed it up.
They feed off lineout drives and unstructured play and that's what we fed them in the first 15-20 minutes.''
After getting back into the game, Edinburgh failed to capitalise on some good pressure against the 14 men following the 64th-minute yellow card for Kaulashvili.
Hodge said: We should have been at 29-all. We were on their line, four-man overlap and we just don't manage to capitalise.
I sound like a broken record but in the last five games there have been three like that, that we should have won. I'm gutted and I know the players are as well.
They are the top side in France and we feel we could have and should have won.''