AFTER a season of progress, including a European cup final, Alan Solomons, the Edinburgh head coach, has signed a deal to stay with the club.
However, instead of the longer-term contract that had been expected, he has signed for only 12 months, meaning his future beyond next season is still in doubt.
Since he will celebrate his 65th birthday in July, it is possibly not too much of a surprise that he is taking things one step at a time, but since his first season was spent firefighting Edinburgh's problems after arriving the week that games started, by the end of next season he will have only had two seasons of practical control to sort things out.
The Scottish Rugby Union, which owns the club, needs to get the timing right on when they transition from South African Solomons to one of the number of Scottish coacheswho need to start getting professional experience. They can't move too quickly because instability on the coaching front has been at the root of Edinburgh's problems, yet they can't leave it too long or the ambitious younger coaches will move away.
Some sort of new contract for Solomons was inevitable once he took the team to the European Challenge Cup final against Gloucester and though he has written off his team's chances of an automatic Champions Cup place after the final round of games tomorrow, he is still hoping to get the consolation prize of a place in the play-off for the top tier.
"Reaching the final of the European Challenge Cup and winning the 1872 Cup have been pleasing and that's testament to the hard work of the players as well as the commitment of all our backroom staff," he said of the season. "The challenges we've faced as a squad this year have been enormous - the injury count in the home game against Lyon being a case in point - but on each occasion we have risen to the challenge.
"I feel we're moving into the next phase of our development as a squad and that's really exciting. We are progressing but there is still a long way to go. I am absolutely focused on continuing this progress and realising the vision."
The position tomorrow is that Edinburgh go into the game lying eighth in the league, so they have to pick up points against Leinster to have any hope of fulfilling their ambitions though their fate is not entirely in their own hands.
The long-shot that Solomons has dismissed is winning with a bonus point while the Scarlets pick up nothing in losing at Treviso and Connacht are also beaten at home to the Ospreys. More realistically, assuming the Ospreys do the expected and win, they only need to win to overtake Connacht and earn a replay against Gloucester in the battle for Champions Cup rugby, though they are going to have to play a lot better than they did last week in losing at Newport Gwent Dragons to make that relevant.
"It annoyed us," admitted Dougie Fife, the wing, as he looked back at that showing. "You saw that in training. It gives more meaning in this game, it gives us something to aim for. Training was a bit more physical, we had maybe lost that in the last few weeks and we needed to bring it back. This game is massive, do or die.
"We have said the last three or four games have been cup finals for us and now this is the last shot we have to get to that Champions Cup play-off place. We have to win and see what happens in the other games - we can only do what we can do."
It has been a relatively light week as Solomons tries to keep the team fresh with the European run meaning his squad were having to raise their game every week while rivals were getting rests, but they have to get back to the kind of intensity levels in the game they had been generating on their way to the final.
"We have played a lot of rugby but I have felt that when I have had a week off I have not played the best the week after, we are tight as a squad, but this is a massive game and if we win it and face Gloucester, we will really be up for it too."
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