ALAN SOLOMONS, the Edinburgh head coach, has not had to look far for critics in recent months, but now that his team has started to win a few key games, the calls from within the camp for him to be given an extended contract have started.
"It is important for me and important for the team that he sees this through, he needs to be around for a while," was the voice of support from Stevie Scott, his key right-hand man and assistant.
What makes Scott's unequivocal support important is that he is in pole position to take over whenever Solomons, who will turn 65 at about the same time as his current contract expires in the summer, does decide to call it a day. Solomons, however, shows no sign of wanting to retire, and Scott says that is fine by him.
"Alan is a great coach, he has been coaching for 37 years and what I have learned from him is fantastic," Scott said. "If my future is to develop into a head coach further down the line, then he is a good man to learn from. His experience in all different competitions can't be matched.
"We work hard together - there are only the two of us, so there is plenty to do - we bounce things off each other. There is still plenty of work but it's pleasing the boys are improving, getting better game by game."
Technically this is Solomons' second season but he arrived too late to do any more than firefight the last campaign, while this one has been badly disrupted by injuries, including the notorious home tie against Lyon which saw no fewer than six frontline players sidelined.
Despite the obstacles, however, there has been heavy criticism over the number of average foreigners brought in to bolster the playing ranks with 15 of the current squad not currently qualified to play for Scotland, though at least two of them are expected to make themselves available when they do qualify on residency grounds.
It is not just results that have started to turn, however. Solomons has also been able to point to a core quartet of young Scots players - Hamish Watson, Sam Hidalgo-Clyne, Rory Sutherland and Ben Toolis - who have flourished after being given regular game time this season. On top of that, he reckons he has a number of promising youngsters bubbling under, ready for their chances to come.
"It is something that has been coming for a while," was Scott's verdict on recent results. "A lot of people think it has just happened over the last few weeks but we have been building for this for 17 months since this squad came together. It took time for the coaches and the boys to gel and there have been a lot of changes with players going out and others coming in.
"We started off really well, had a poor game at Murrayfield against Connacht and then had a really bad run of injuries just as we were starting to get somewhere. That started to get to the squad. When you look at the games we won, they have been when we have had more players available. Against Bordeaux, we were pretty much 90 percent our strongest team. Touch wood, if we can keep away from injuries and can put our strongest team out, we have taken big steps forward."
The task this weekend will be to carry that momentum into a tough game in Lyon, where a win would put them on the verge of reaching the quarter finals of the European Challenge Cup.
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