ANDY Robinson has confirmed that Edinburgh will not be losing internationalists this summer, but they remain unlikely to land any top names as the club tries to develop a combative squad free of the attentions of predatory English and French clubs.
The Edinburgh coach was "shocked" to discover the salary demands of leading targets, which he said had doubled over the eight months since he joined the capital side. Robinson has been looking, but his priority, after the club lost several players la
st summer, was to stop the haemorrhaging of talent.
He said: "The market has changed since I first arrived at the club.
"There has probably been a 50 per cent increase in overseas players' salaries since I came here – £140,000 a year ago is now £210,000. But we talked about this and we felt we had to keep our players that have been really performing, our young players, to ensure Edinburgh rugby is not seen as an academy for the premiership in England or France.
"Ross Rennie and John Houston are examples of young players who have really performed well for us and have a huge future so signing them on good contracts were vital to allow Edinburgh to grow.
"The salary cap is going up in England next season and I've been told the budgets the Irish teams have, which are incredible, and the bidding wars that are now going on ... well, we're not at a (financial] level to compete."
One young talent not staying at Edinburgh is Stephen McColl, the talented age-group centre, who is quitting the national academy for Doncaster, coached by former Edinburgh head coach Lynn Howells.
Rob Moffat, the Edinburgh backs coach, admitted the current midfield talent at the club precluded him from offering McColl a full-time contract, which merely underlines the problems of keeping native talent in a system with just two professional teams and one academy.
Meanwhile, Robinson is pleased to have Mike Blair back at scrum-half now that the Scotland internationalist has fully recovered from the concussion he suffered against Glasgow earlier this month, but he is missing a clutch of other first-choices to injury for the visit to the Ospreys tomorrow.
Houston is out with a head knock and joins Simon Webster (hamstring), Mark Robertson (shoulder), Gavin Kerr (neck), Andrew Kelly (calf), Simon Cross (back) and Craig Hamilton (thigh) in the treatment room. Hugo Southwell is also missing this weekend due to family commitments.
Edinburgh team (to play Ospreys at the Liberty Stadium, tomorrow, kick-off 7.10pm): C MacRae; A Maxwell, B Cairns, N De Luca, A Turnbull; P Godman, M Blair; A Allori, R Ford, G Cross, M Mustchin, B Gissing, A Hogg (capt), D Callam, A MacDonald.
Subs: S Lawrie, K Traynor, F Pringle, S Newlands, G Laidlaw, D Blair, M Dey.
The full article contains 481 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
