Ex-Howe of Fife flanker Jamie Ritchie targeting three wins out of three for Edinburgh to seal United Rugby Championship play-off place

Edinburgh flanker Jamie Ritchie after their 43-18 win at home to Llanelli's Scarlets at the Scottish capital's Hive Stadium on Saturday, April 20 (Pic: Ewan Bootman/SNS Group/SRU)

Former Howe of Fife flanker Jamie Ritchie was delighted to see current side Edinburgh notch up back-to-back victories against Welsh opposition on Saturday and is now targeting extending that winning streak to five games to secure a United Rugby Championship play-off place.

Edinburgh’s 24-7 win in Cardiff at the weekend, following on from beating Llanelli’s Scarlets 43-18 at home at the capital’s Hive Stadium seven days prior, takes their tally of points up to 43 from 15 fixtures, but they remain outside the top eight play-off places, in ninth.

Win their remaining three matches of the regular season, though – at home to bottom-of-the-table Zebre Parma next Friday, May 10, and third-placed Munster the Friday after and away to eighth-placed Benetton on Saturday, June 1 – and they’ll make it past the cut-off point to extend their campaign and Ritchie believes they’re more than capable of that.

“All we can do is try to keep winning,” said the 27-year-old. “Everything else, unfortunately, is out of our control, so all we can do is keep focusing on ourselves, keep putting ourselves in a position to win and try to get bonus points.

“It is in our hands. We have got the next two games at home, where we love playing and back ourselves to put in a good performance, but it’s one week at a time at the moment, and then in three or four weeks’ time, we will see where we are at.

“That was definitely an important win in Cardiff.

“We are aiming to win all our games in our run-in and that is another one ticked off.

“It is a massive result for us. We knew it was going to be tough and I would say it was a very emotional game for them, but I am proud of the way we stuck in there and got the win.”

Edinburgh are within a point of the three teams above them and Ritchie is hopeful thay can bridge that slender gap, saying: “I think the table is one of those things you need to have an awareness of but is not necessarily something that the whole group has to worry about.

“That is probably just for the guys who are driving the game forward and making the decisions in and around ‘do we go for points, do we go for the corner’ and things like that.

“It is definitely important to have an awareness and it adds a bit of an extra motivation.”