Edinburgh’s two-season malaise will take at least two more months to solve, but new head coach Alan Solomons believes the capital club will be competitive in both Rabodirect PRO12 and Heineken Cup this season.
The former Ulster and Northampton head coach, also previously assistant to Nick Mallett for South Africa when the Springboks went on a record run of successive wins, arrived in Edinburgh at the weekend to try and get the beleaguered club back on track.
A Heineken Cup semi-final two years ago masked a deeper problem that saw Edinburgh finish in the second-bottom spot in the league two years in a row under Michael Bradley.
An immediate improvement in “our primary domestic competition” is Solomon’s first aim.
The former Cape Town lawyer, now 63, has a reputation as a man who rebuild a team or even start from Ground Zero, as he did with the Kings Super Rugby franchise in his homeland before taking up the Edinburgh job.
“There are parallels, but at the Kings we were making a start in pro rugby where there hadn’t been any before,” he said.
“Here at Edinburgh we have an established club that has exitsed since the start of professionalism, and since the start of what was the Celtic League.
“They’ve been competitive in both league and in the Heineken Cup, but the last two seasons haven’t gone the way people would like, and there’s work to be done to make sure Edinburgh Rugby gets back on track.”
However, the hurried nature of the appointment Solomons finished with the Kings just on August 3 represents an additional challenge, he admitted.
“It’s different for me to come into a situation effectively at the end of pre-season,” he said, with the start of the PRO12 just three weeks away.
“It’s novel and certainly challenging. But I haven’t come in with any preconceptions or pre-judging anyone.
“I am aware of the established international players in the squad and their abilities because I’ve watched Scotland these last few years, but I don’t know them as people and that is the most important thing.
“It’s going to take me a couple of months to settle in and make an assessment of the squad, and then I’ll sit down with (Edinburgh managing director) David Davies and we’ll talk about a long-term plan, but I believe we’ll see the green shoots of recovery by that time.”
Solomons has brought his assistant coach Omar Mouneimne to work on a defensive structure that was often lacking last year, and believes him to be “a world class coach who will improve us in a system and in the collision area”.
Additions to the squad may come later, after SRU director of rugby Scott Johnson and Davies brought in four players from the southern hemisphere “out of necessity” while Solomons was completing his previous tenure.
“Stevie Scott and Neil Potts have been working hard on pre-season and conditioning, and I’ll be talking to them a lot,” added Solomons. The perception that there might have even been an attitude and morale problem within Edinburgh last year will be addressed directly at a getaway training camp in Loughborough this week.
“I’ll speak to every player individually, about their development and rugby in general,” continued Solomons.
“We’ll also have a workshop to determine our values and how we conduct ourselves as a squad, which I believe is important in terms of morale.”
Asked if he had heard the perception that Edinburgh tended only to play “when they felt like it”, Solomons added that he expected his teams “to feel like it in every game”.
“The immediate target is to improve our position in the Rabo,” he said.
“It has become a wonderful competition but it was a difficult one for the club last year.
“We will be competitive in the Heineken Cup, but we should take it one stage at a time. The Rabo is our domestic competition and we have to improve our standing in that first.”