Rampaging Flying Fijians forward Viliame Mata scored a try in Edinburgh’s 31-23 win over the 14-men Bulls in Round 5 of the United Rugby Championship in Scotland this morning.
The Bulls broke the deadlock after a strong eight minutes of tussling when Devon Williams sliced his way through the Edinburgh defence and touched under the post to make it easy for Johan Goosen to convert for a 7-0 lead.
Seven minutes later, the Bulls gave away two penalties to Edinburgh and Ben Healy made no mistake in booting the ball between the uprights to merge the scores at 7-6.
Edinburgh joy was short lived when Goosen slotted two back-to-back penalties making it 13-6 in the 29th minute.
An individual effort from Ewan Ashman saw him barge over the Bulls try line to score the first try for Edinburgh but Healy failed to convert as they trailed 13-11 at the break.
Upon the commencement of the second stanza, Bulls was reduced to 14 players when the match official flashed a direct red card to co-captain Marcell Coetzee for a dangerous tackle.
Two minutes later after the incident, Ashman crossed for Edinburgh’s second try to give them a 16-13 for the first time in the match despite Healy missing the conversion.
What went from bad to worse for the Bulls was when they were reduced to 13 players as Cameron Hanekom was sin-binned for a foul play.
Edinburgh took advantage of the next 10 minutes scoring two back-to-back tries with Duhan van der Merwe and Mata raced to the try line to plant the ball down but Healy was able to convert once.
No later, the Bulls responded with a try from Wilco Louw and van der Merwe converted and added a penalty for 23 points.
Edinburgh was also reduced to 14 players when Mata copped a yellow card followed by Bulls being reduced to 14 players again with Sergeal Petersen getting a yellow card.
On the stroke of full time, Healy kicked the last penalty to seal Edinburgh’s fourth win of the season.
