NEVER is the multi-cultural nature of club rugby more obvious than during the international window.
That is when the current crop of capped players are away and clubs explore the recesses of the squad where all their imports lurk, waiting for exactly this kind of opportunity.
So it was that last weekend Edinburgh travelled to Ulster with one player born and brought up in Scotland in their ranks - Dougie Fife, the wing. Alongside him were five from South Africa, three born in England, two Argentinians, and one born in each of Australia, New Zealand, Tonga and Spain.
Yet, if being surrounded by that kind of foreign legion worries Fife as he prepares to face Connacht at Murrayfield tomorrow, it is not showing. Far from it. Such is the concentration on the job in hand that he admits it was not until someone else pointed the statistic out to him that he even noticed.
"There are plenty of boys who can play for Scotland, just were not born here," he pointed out. "And a lot of the players who were brought in, the Argentinians and the South Africans, all bring physicality and a whole lot more to the team, they make the team stronger."
He is right as far as it goes. Seven of the starting XV were qualified to play for Scotland including two, Greig Tonks, the full back, and Jack Cuthbert, the wing, who have already been capped. Others, such as Sam Hidalgo-Clyne, the 20-year-old scum-half who was born in Spain but has lived in Scotland most of his life, are likely to win caps at some stage. On top of that at least two of the South African contingent who supplied five starters last week have pledged themselves to trying to qualify for Scotland on residential grounds.
So whatever their backgrounds, there is no lack of Scottish ambition and under Alan Solomons, the head coach brought in at the start of the season, there is a feeling that not only are they improving game by game but that by doing so, they are helping individuals realise their individual ambitions.
So for the likes of Tonks, whose only cap so far came against Samoa on the summer tour, it is important that the club climbs the RaboDirect Pro12 table. That means that far from tomorrow's game being an easy run against the league's bottom club, it is a must-win match if Edinburgh are to have any chance of climbing into the top half of the table.
"The wins in the last two home games against the Italian teams have made a huge difference to our season,"Tonks said. "It is close down the bottom and there was been a lot of confidence from them. We are confident in our systems and what we want to do.
"Personally, it was disappointing to be in the Scotland squad and not play; frustrating really. It is out of my hands, though, all I can do is play as well as I can for Edinburgh. My rugby at the moment is purely based on playing for Edinburgh, where everything seems to be going the right way."
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