Edinburgh Rugby head coach Alan Solomons believes that the competition for places brought about by John Hardie’s arrival at the club can only help his team improve.
Scotland’s impressive New Zealand-born back-row Hardie joined the capital outfit earlier this week on a two-year deal.
He – along with WP Nel, Ross Ford, Alasdair Dickinson, David Denton and Matt Scott - have been given an extended break following the World Cup and are likely to reappear in early November.
Before that Edinburgh have a tricky test to think about against Zebre at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi tomorrow in the Guinness PRO12.
And Solomons believes the news of Hardie’s arrival will have boosted his squad ahead of the trip to Italy - where they will be aiming to make it five league wins from five.
The head coach said: “We look forward to having John join us, he is a first class bloke and he has had a first class World Cup. I think he will fit in and add a lot of value to Edinburgh.
“I look at this news in two ways. Competition brings the best out of people - haven’t we seen that in the World Cup? - so his presence at training and on he pitch will force others to work even harder too.
“And the second thing is that we are heading into the second of 16 back-to-back games this weekend, so we are going to need everyone in the squad in the coming months so nobody will be left on the sidelines.
“On average in the first four games we have had between 10 and 12 guys out - either injured or at the World Cup - for each of them and yet we have performed well and that speaks volumes for our strength in depth.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel