Sam Skinner tells Edinburgh to stick to game-plan in South Africa as he hails 'awesome' Sean Everitt

The Edinburgh forward insists there is no secret to progressing at this level and believes Sean Everitt’s side have enough quality to defeat the Sharks in South Africa in Saturday’s Challenge Cup quarter-final, provided they stick to their head coach’s game-plan.

The capital club went down 23-13 to the same opponents in the league a fortnight ago but have been given an almost immediate chance to take revenge and also reach their first semi-final in nine years.

Skinner is in his second season at Edinburgh after making the switch from Exeter. He helped the Chiefs win a Champions Cup and Premiership double in 2020, playing his part in both finals as Rob Baxter’s team proved adept at winning in the knockout stages.

“It’s just winning rugby, isn’t it?” said Skinner. “So what is that? It’s playing to win the game. It’s not trying to not lose, if that makes sense.”

Edinburgh did that against Bayonne on Saturday, scoring five tries in their 33-15 home win in the round of 16, and Skinner knows they will need to be similarly aggressive in Durban against opponents who boast a formidable array of Springbok talent.

“Bonus points don’t matter but you’ll have seen a lot of teams in both [European] competitions kick to the corner when it’s on because that’s how you win games of rugby: you build pressure, you score tries,” said the second-row.

“As simple as it sounds, that’s our game plan, really: to go and put our game on them. That’s the thing - we’re not going there just to stop their press, we’re going to implement our game-plan. Respect them for what they have, because what they have is outstanding, but believe in what we’ve got and stick our plan on them. So that’s it really, and repeat for 80 minutes.

“Sean’s been brilliant. He’s an awesome head coach. He’s given us a very clear game-plan. We’ve just got to make sure we can execute it bang on and then hopefully we can start to get the results that everyone on and off the field are working so hard to achieve.”