No second-season syndrome for Edinburgh's Blair Kinghorn

Blair Kinghorn is loving his rugby just now

If there is such a thing as “second season syndrome” then 19-year-old Edinburgh full-back Blair Kinghorn has shown no signs of it so far.

After his breakthrough into the first team last term, the Scotland Under-20 star has continued in the same vein so far in the new campaign and is looking forward to getting back into Guinness Pro12 action when Edinburgh face the Dragons in Newport this afternoon.

“I’m loving it at the moment. It’s good that I’m playing and I’ve just got to keep that going; keep training hard, doing all the analysis and the extras,” said Kinghorn.

“Come game time, you’ve just got to focus on your job, not worry about anything else because you’ve not left anything to chance. You know you’ve put the hard work in.”

The Dragons sit third bottom in the table, separating Edinburgh and the Italian basement duo, and while that’s the kind of team Duncan Hodge’s men would hope to be beating, Kinghorn, pictured, has experience of how tough a place Rodney Parade is to play.

“I played down there last season [a 16-15 win for Edinburgh in March]. It will be a tough game. We’re going to Wales twice in a row [Scarlets next weekend], and we’ll come with our gameplan looking to do a job. It’s a tough place to go, but if we play the way we can, we’ll do well.”

Kinghorn admitted that seeing Scotland Under-20 team-mates like Magnus Bradbury and Zander Fagerson making the step up to the full national team was inspiring.

“Magnus has been in class form this year for Edinburgh and it shows that form gets rewarded,” he said.