Edinburgh coach is making plans for end of season already

EDINBURGH are bidding to intensify their season preparation with a first home game against London Irish tomorrow night, but coach Rob Moffat explained yesterday that his plans for the opening weeks were now made with a keen eye on the business end of the season.

• Edinburgh rugby head coach Rob Moffat is looking at ways to juggle a squad facing huge demands Picture: PA

Moffat was in Cardiff on Monday and Tuesday with new captain Roddy Grant and award-winners Chris Paterson and Tim Visser for the launch of the 2010-11 Magners League season.

Back on home turf yesterday he revealed how he had taken the chance to bend some ears of rival coaches on how they manage the demands of squads full of internationalists in a season that is simply too long.

Edinburgh will kick off away to Cardiff in nine days' time and then host Munster six days later at the start of a run of five league games in just under five weeks before launching into the Heineken Cup with another game at Cardiff followed by a home meeting with Northampton seven days later. The players will return for three rounds of league games - two for the internationalists - before Scotland's autumn Test series kicks off with three of the most brutal internationals players could experience in three weeks.

It is no wonder that Moffat was speaking yesterday, therefore, about the value of having a strong squad and why he is exposing as many players as possible in the warm-up matches. Missing a handful of core players at Bath, the team performed well in spells only for rustiness and defensive slips to be exposed as a strong home side ran out 49-21 winners.

Moffat has expanded his squad from 26 to 31 for tomorrow night's game. He has not divulged a starting line-up because he views all the players equally, irrespective of whether they start or come on, and wants all to push for starting berths when the league starts.

"We're going to play almost like two teams as we did at Bath," he said, "and I feel it would send out the wrong message out to the players (by naming a starting XV]. There would be something wrong if I wasn't constantly thinking about the team for Cardiff, but this is going to be one heck of a season with four extra games (due to Italian clubs' entry] and everything Scotland 'A' and Scotland players will be faced with.

"When you look at how the Ospreys won last season, and where they came from, it was because of the strength of the squad, whereas Leinster had two or three injuries and struggled at the end. So we have to get off to a good start, but we have got to finish the season well as well. In most positions we are very, very competitive and a real positive against Bath was that we had no real injuries. It's getting the balance between how much contact you do and how much game-time you give players without picking up too many injuries. We lose one or two just in training, even in the gym, every week, just because of the intensity of the season.

"It has been interesting speaking to other coaches and what's clear is that there are few players that play a big number of games now.

"You can't keep patching people up and think they'll perform at this and international level, because they won't."

Moffat noted how Ireland have often left out their core internationalists from the first month of action, others hand their players a list at the start of the season of the games they will play and the weeks to sit out.

The schedule of 17 games before the end of the year, including the internationals, and another nine before the Six Nations, in a game that is more physical than it has ever been underlines what Moffat was speaking about.

To that end Moffat brought his strength and conditioning coach Andy Boyd to yesterday's press conference and allowed him to explain further how the team had been changing its approach, personalising player training much more scientifically, in an effort to avoid the loss of form some have suffered as a result of their bodies virtually giving out before the season ends.

Boyd said: "Coaches want their best players out there nine times out of ten, but we have a great relationship with Rob [Moffat] here and he accepts that not every player can recover from what can be like a car crash every week."

Edinburgh squad: (v London Irish at Murrayfield, tomorrow, 7:30pm): Backs - C Paterson, M Robertson, T Visser, A Turnbull, L Jones, T Brown, B Cairns, A Grove, J Houston, J King, P Godman, M Blair, G Laidlaw, D Blair, A Blair; Forwards - A Jacobsen, R Ford, G Cross, K Traynor, A Kelly, J Gilding, E Lozada, C Hamilton, S Turnbull, F McKenzie, R Grant, A MacDonald, S Newlands, R Rennie, S McInally, N Talei.