Edinburgh Rugby reveal key playing philosophy for new season
New coaches implementing tactical changes
Edinburgh have revamped their coaching staff and aim to refresh their playing style for the new season by playing a faster brand of rugby.
Having failed to make the play-offs last term in the United Rugby Championship - for the third time in four years - something had to change. The club parted company in the summer with three of their assistant coaches and the three men who replaced them are making their presence felt.
Sean Everitt and Stevie Lawrie have been retained as head coach and forwards coach, respectively, and the latter said the emphasis in pre-season had been on pace.
“[It’s] around about how fast we can play, that's been a big focus for us,” said Lawrie who has been joined by new attack coach Tim Sampson, defence guru Brad Davis and skills and contact expert Michael Hodge.
“We want to be first to things. So that's been the real focus, along with obviously with the new coaches coming in, allowing them the time to implement some of the changes that they want to make within each area tactically.
“You have to train in an appropriate way for that as well and we've been cognisant of that. Training has been sharp, but you've just got to keep bringing that accuracy as well.”
Everitt’s new philosophy
Lawrie was keen to emphasise that the desire to play at speed applied to defence as well as attack.
“We've been challenging them, I think, both sides of the ball,” he said. “And I'm not just talking attack, I'm talking defence as well, around about can we pressure the attack with our speed?”
Edinburgh looked sluggish at times last season and one of the regular gripes has been around their failure to get the best out of Darcy Graham and Duhan van der Merwe, their two world-class wingers who have speed in abundance.
Everitt has spoken previously about moving the ball more quickly to their dangermen and Lawrie said the head coach wants to implement the faster philosophy this season, which begins for Edinburgh on Friday with a friendly against Ulster at Hive Stadium.
“I think for Sean, certainly, there are probably changes within that game model that he'd wanted to see,” said Lawrie. “If you're fast up in the face of the opposition, you're going to force errors, obviously.
“And if you're fast to set defensively, then you're on the front foot. It's about how you can pressure the opposition. So the word fast is a suitable adjective for what we want to be about.”
Echoes of Townsend
There are echoes of Gregor Townsend’s famous declaration that he wanted Scotland to “play the fastest rugby in the world”, delivered shortly after he took over as national coach in 2017. That came back to bite Townsend in his first Six Nations match in charge when Wales thrashed Scotland in Cardiff but the team recovered well to beat both France and England later in that campaign.
Speed in itself is not going to be the magical solution for Edinburgh, a point not lost on Lawrie. His area of expertise is the forwards and stressed the need for the pack to be both ruthless and relentless.
“It's always about evolving,” he said when asked what the focus had been. “Every session really, you're talking to the guys and you're constantly trying to get that edge, so it would be about progressing that work.
“I think also looking at the age profile of our forwards and the exciting group that we've got, it's about making sure that they just turn up every single day and understand what it takes to be a really successful individual within a pack, but also within a team.
“It's never getting bored of doing the basic stuff as well as you can do every single day. That's probably been my focus.
“We've got a good group of youth coming through, but also it's for me to make sure that our senior guys are leading them appropriately as well, which they're brand new at. It's just that everyone's human.
“You've got to make sure you stay on top of everything. So it's about being relentless and being ruthless really, but also learning and maybe tweaking things that you've got to get better as well.”
Edinburgh may field a different XV in each half against Ulster but the match will come too soon for Ben Vellacott who underwent a shoulder operation in the summer and will miss the start of the URC season.
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