Still smarting from their last-gasp defeat to Ulster in Belfast last weekend, Matt Sherratt’s side will be hoping to turn their recent run of agonisingly close losses into a win to give Ellis Jenkins the perfect send-off in his final home game for the region.
The former Wales captain is hanging up his boots at the end of the season and will be hoping to end on a high by helping Cardiff to win their first game in the BKY United Rugby Championship since they beat the Dragons on Boxing Day.
Sherratt has made five changes to his starting XV from the side that went down 19-17 at the Kingspan. Three of those changes are up front, where Jenkins comes in for Thomas Young at openside flanker, the departing Rhys Carré swaps wit Corey Domachowski at loose head prop and Mackenzie Martin replaces the injured Taulupe Faletau.
Behind the scrum, on loan Puma Gonzalo Bertranou will make his first start at scrum half, while Harri Millard replaces Josh Adams, who is ruled out with a groin injury.
Edinburgh will arrive in the Welsh capital on the back of scoring four unanswered tries in the final quarter of their 43-18 comeback win over Scarlets last weekend to keep themselves in the hunt for a top eight finish.
“As soon as we stepped on the pitch after the game in Belfst, genuinely the first words were let’s make sure we take it out on Edinburgh next week. We tried to flip the mindset quite quickly and we’ve just got to dust ourselves down and get on with it,” said Sherratt.
“Edinburgh are a very, very solid team who possess very good physical attributes. They have some real threats in their side like Hamish Watson, Duhan van der Merwe, Jamie Ritchie and Bill Mata,” added Sherratt.
“There won’t be any drop off in effort or performance from us and we need to ensure we get them to play the type of game we want to play, rather than allow them to dictate how they want to play.”
Leave a Reply