Edinburgh Rugby chief on ‘new energy’, keeping Sean Everitt and fending off the All Blacks

Big changes have taken place at the club since last season fizzled out into a 12th place finish. An overhaul of the coaching team, significant recruitment at half-back and in midfield and a continued emphasis on bringing through young, local talent have been key focuses. There were also new appointments to the strength and conditioning staff and the medical team.

“There's been a huge amount of change over the summer, both on and off the pitch,” said Struth. “And I think all of that has brought a level of anticipation and a level of new energy around the place. That has been really exciting to be a part of for the last two months.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is the head coach. Sean Everitt had his contract extended in January and the latest deal runs until the end of the 2027-28 season. Everitt has been in situ since 2023 and Edinburgh have finished 10th, seventh and 12th in the three United Rugby Championship campaigns he has overseen, making the play-offs only once.

Players responding to the new coaches

It’s a meagre return but Edinburgh and Scottish Rugby have kept faith with the South African, choosing instead to replace the assistant coaches around him. Out went Michael Todd, Scott Mathie and Rob Chrystie and in came Brad Davis, Tim Sampson and Michael Hodge, specialists in defence, attack and skills/contact, respectively.

Davis and Sampson are battle-hardened Australian operators who have arrived from Super Rugby and Struth likes what he’s seen.

“My observation of the way they communicate is that it's very different,” he said. “Whether that's a harder edge or a more focused edge, or maybe just a way more experienced edge in terms of how they're communicating with the players. And I'm certainly observing the players respond to that as well.”

Loyal fanbase

It would be fair to say the decision to retain Everitt wasn’t universally popular, certainly among some Edinburgh followers on social media. The rank and file support has been more loyal and season ticket sales are only marginally down on last season’s record of just below 3,700.

Edinburgh remain a well-supported club. They had four sell-outs at Hive Stadium last year, attracted almost 40,000 for the festive fixture against Glasgow at Murrayfield and also pulled in a record crowd for the home fixture with Zebre which has traditionally been the hardest sell.

“Last season was the highest average Hive crowd we've had, which was 7,100, which again was exceptional,” said Struth.

“We can't take that for granted. Season tickets this year have held up. I'm very grateful and very humbled at the loyalty that our fans are showing and I would urge them to continue to back this young team because they do need it. They will inevitably still be a little bit inconsistent. They're still young, young men.”

While last season was ultimately a disappointing one, the emergence of homegrown talents such as Liam McConnell, Freddy Douglas and Ollie Blyth-Lafferty was highly encouraging.

The youthfulness of the Edinburgh squad is one of the reasons Everitt was retained. It was not the only one and Struth says the coach passed muster in two of three “key performance indicators” used to measure Everitt’s performance. While the URC campaign was disappointing, there were notable wins over Toulon and Gloucester in the Investec Champions Cup before a 49-31 defeat by Leinster in Dublin in the round of 16.

“I probably need to fact-check this - but I think Sean has actually got the highest winning percentage of any Edinburgh Rugby head coach in the professional era,” said Struth. “Higher than Richard Cockerill, higher than Mike Blair, higher than Andy Robinson, higher than Frank Hadden.

“I think there's a perception that we're not playing winning rugby. We are playing some winning rugby, just not as much winning rugby as we'd all like to do. Last season, Sean would have had three key KPIs: to make the URC play-offs, and we didn't achieve that. Make the EPCR knockout rounds, and we did achieve that, against some incredibly tough competition from some of those big French teams with massive, massive budgets.

“But another KPI for Sean last year was player development and making sure that our young players coming through the pathway were getting meaningful game minutes. And if you look at the likes of Freddy Douglas playing 18 times last year at the age of 21, Liam McConnell 18 times at the age of 21, Ollie Blyth Lafferty, I think 11-odd appearance at 20, Jack Brown was only 20 last year and played 10 times. Sean delivered on that and more.

“And when you take a step back and look at Sean's core skill sets, he's a very good rugby coach, but he's a very good developer of people.”

Struth and Everitt both know that results need to improve. Edinburgh were out of contention in the URC long before the end of the regular season and steps have been taken to improve the squad in key areas. James Grayson, the experienced former Northampton Saints fly-half, has arrived from Japanese rugby and should bring more control at 10. Centre Riley Higgins and scrum-half Louie Chapman are due in Edinburgh in November when their commitments in New Zealand end.

‘Fortunate to have him in an Edinburgh jersey’

The capture of the Scottish-qualified Higgins is the most eye-catching of Edinburgh’s signings and Struth said the All Blacks were trying to persuade the gifted centre to commit to them up until the last minute.

“Sean's view is that we needed to probably supplement what we were doing at nine, at ten and in the midfield,” said Struth.

“So Louie Chapman arriving from the Crusaders, James Grayson arriving from Japan after a century of appearances for Northampton Saints and being in England squads, and then obviously Riley Higgins joining from the Hurricanes, and we're incredibly excited to have Riley join us.

“It's a frustrating but strange quirk of contracting players from New Zealand that the NPC contract cycles are just a bit off kilter from the European ones, so we have to wait until November to see those guys [Higgins and Chapman] make their debuts.

“But the Riley signing is incredibly exciting for us as a club and also for Scottish rugby. Even right to the very last minute, New Zealand Rugby were trying to make him sign declarations of intent for the All Blacks, so that to me shows the level of regard that they have for him and how fortunate we therefore are to have him in an Edinburgh jersey in the coming months and in the years to follow.”

Higgins, who underwent a shoulder operation in the summer, has already visited the city and met with the club’s medical staff and Struth is confident he will arrive ready to play in November.

In the meantime, Edinburgh kick off the new URC campaign against Ulster in Belfast on Friday night. Struth is reluctant to make publicly set a target for the season.

“In the URC, you've got some teams like Leinster or the Bulls or the Stormers or the Sharks who have the budgets to near enough guarantee play-offs every year we're not in that space,” said the MD. “From a budget perspective, we're probably in what we call a little bit of a mid-table pile up with a number of other sides who are operating at around the same budgets as us in almost anything from 5th to 12th place. It's so tight but if we're doing what we want to be doing and what we're planning to be doing then we should be in that play-off mix.”