EDINBURGH have been handed an attractive start to the season, with European champions Munster travelling to Murrayfield for the opening match of the Magners League, while Glasgow open away to Newport, who they also face in the Heineken Cup.
The Magners League season kicks off on the weekend beginning 5 September and the fixtures, announced yesterday, have handed the Scottish teams quite different starts. Edinburgh follow Munster with a match away to Leinster – the reigning Magners champ
ions who confirmed yesterday that season ticket sales had topped 8,000 – and then face Llanelli (home) and Newport and Ulster away before the Heineken Cup begins in mid-October.
Glasgow's first home match is against the Ospreys, who have again bolstered their squad with a summer spending spree, on 12 September and then have Connacht (away), Llanelli (home) and Munster (away) before the Heineken Cup starts. The two Scottish sides meet in back-to-back league clashes for the 1872 Cup on 26 December and 2 January, first at Murrayfield and then the New Year meeting at Firhill, while the season will end on 16 May to avoid any conflict with the British and Irish Lions' tour to South Africa.
With Andy Robinson on holiday, Rob Moffat, the Edinburgh assistant coach, was overseeing the club's final summer signing yesterday, Bruce McNeil, the former Hawick and Heriot's prop, agreeing a two-year deal to step up from the SRU's National Academy.
That takes the senior squad to 40-strong, with unprecedented strength in depth, which further boosted Moffat's appetite for the opening challenges. He said: "Playing the Heineken Cup champions at home, two weeks after we play Wasps at Murrayfield in our final pre-season friendly, is a fantastic start to the season for us.
"Then to face Leinster, the league champions, in Dublin is another great test, but this is what I prefer. We want to bring real success to Edinburgh, to win things, and to do that you can't afford to cruise through any part of the season.
"We have to be bang in form right at the start to build momentum and then work hard to carry it through the season, and that's why we have organised friendlies with Bath – the European Challenge Cup champions – and then Wasps."
Sean Lineen, Glasgow's coach, was similarly sanguine about the fixture list. He said: "It's a challenging start away from home against the Dragons, but it'll be the first time since I've been involved with Glasgow that we'll bring the curtain down on our domestic campaign at home (against Connacht].
"It's also fantastic for Scottish rugby that we're going to have back-to-back derbies over Christmas and New Year. I hope the Scottish public will come out in force for both games this season, especially as season-ticket holders get in for free."
The full article contains 478 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
