Edinburgh won’t hurry World Cup stars back into action

Edinburgh are in no rush to bring the rest of their World Cup contingent back into action, and are likely to travel to Treviso this week with a very similar squad to the one which saw duty in last weekend’s win over Scarlets.

Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill, right, jokes around with assistant Duncan Hodge at BT Murrayfield. Picture: Ross MacDonald/SNS

That is in part because some Scotland players are due a longer period in which to recover and get up to speed in training but, in any case, the team’s good form this season means there is no sense of urgency. The win over Scarlets – in which national squad members Blair Kinghorn, Henry Pyrgos and Magnus Bradbury all played – was Edinburgh’s third in their four Pro 14 games to date.

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” assistant coach Duncan Hodge, right, said when asked if that good form meant there was no need for haste. “[The squad is] pretty much the same as last week, I think. It’s a difficult one, because all these guys go away, we’ve not seen them for four months, and there’s been changes. It takes a bit of time to integrate them back. We got lucky last week. Blair slotted in really well with very little training, Henry [a late call-up by Scotland] had been with us, then he was away, and Maggie picked it up at late notice. But it is a hard thing sometimes.”

The more attacking style employed by Edinburgh this season may be novel to spectators, but Hodge explained it had been some time in the making. “It was always the plan – the foundations were put in place, and I think everyone knew that to go to the next level we had to change a few things,” he added.