'Amazing for us': Rising Scotland star singled out after Toulon win

Edinburgh head coach Sean Everitt saluted another major step in the rapid emergence of flanker Liam McConnell after the 21-year-old’s player-of-the-match display in a memorable European Champions Cup victory over Toulon.

The former Scotland Under-20s captain had made only one senior start for the club prior to this season but has started all their URC matches so far this term and enjoyed a rollicking Scotland debut against the USA last month.

On Sunday the blindside led the tackle count with 20, was Edinburgh’s top ball-carrier with 12, charged down Toulon’s Scotland scrum-half Ben White and caused Toulon captain David Ribbans to be sin-binned when the England lock smacked McConnell’s head into the ground in retaliation for being driven off his feet at a ruck.

Edinburgh, leading 21-20 at the time, took advantage of Ribbans’ absence to earn a penalty try which took them 28-20 clear before Boan Venter’s try with six minutes left sealed a bonus-point victory to launch their Pool Two campaign.

“Liam has been amazing for us,” Everitt said. “He made his debut earlier this year and he came back from pre-season in such good nick – his performances have shown the work he did in the off-season.

“He has grown in every performance he has had, and we saw that for the Scotland team (against USA) as well. I am proud of him.”

McConnell said Edinburgh had been relishing the prospect of tackling the three-time European champions, who boasted four ex-England internationals and other stars including Italy centre Nacho Brex and White, whose two early tries put the French side 17-10 up before the hosts fought back to lead 18-17 at the interval and take control in the third quarter.

“It was awesome,” McConnell told Premier Sports. “We have been looking forward to it since the start of the season – one of the top teams in one of the best leagues in the world coming to our home, so we were buzzing for it.

“We thought physically we could get to them and I think we definitely did that. It was a bit scrappy at times but when we got our chances, we really took them.”

Despite falling 10-0 behind early on, Everitt’s side showed commendable calm and patience in torrential rain, Ewan Ashman playing a pivotal role in first-half tries for Pierre Schoeman and Ben Vellacott, the latter via a sumptuous back-door offload.

There was also a mature display from fly-half Cammy Scott – preferred to Scotland internationals Ross Thompson and Ben Healy – who kicked superbly from hand, including one 50:22 in the second half, to help Edinburgh win the territorial battle.

“I’m happy for Cammy and the way he managed the game,” Everitt said. “I thought he was brilliant tonight when you consider it was only his third start (at 10); [scrum-half] Ben Vellacott was as well. The pack did a great job against a massive team from France. I thought [tighthead prop] Ollie Blyth-Lafferty, at 19 years old, scrummaging against a powerful pack, also did very well in that first half.

“I suppose you might be concerned at 10-0 down after six minutes, but we fought back and showed composure. The message behind the poles was defensively, we had to stop their momentum off nine and the boys got back on task and recovered well.

“In our previous game [a scratchy 19-17 URC win over Ospreys], we left acres of space out there and we were quite hard on the players with regards to that. They took accountability, we trained hard on that all week and the guys delivered.”

Captain Magnus Bradbury, one of the survivors from Edinburgh’s memorable home-and-away double over Toulon in the 2018-19 Champions Cup pool stages, believes Sunday’s bonus-point win could be “huge” for their prospects of progressing to the knock-out stages, with a trip to face another Top 14 side, Castres, next Sunday.

“We know how tight it is going to be and we targeted this game from the start of the season,” Bradbury added. “We saw it as a great challenge of where we are as a team and we will keep marching on. We’ve got Castres away next and we will see what happens there.

“For young guys like Liam [McConnell] and Ollie Blyth-Lafferty starting to come through and have breakthrough games, we talked about making special memories. But you have to bar up and earn those memories and credit to everyone, we absolutely did that.”