Edinburgh's interim head coach Nick Scrivener is this week in camp with Scotland A ahead of their game against Italy A at Netherdale on Friday night.
The Canberra man's first game in charge of the capital club comes on Saturday 12 February away to Newport Gwent Dragons (kick-off 2pm).
Scrivener told www.edinburghrugby.org: “It’s clearly been a pretty hectic few days for all concerned, and to a certain extent the dust is still settling, but I’m really looking forward to the challenge of working with the players to produce a strong second half to this season.
“It’s important that I focus my energies on Scotland A this week, but come the weekend and the start of next week it will be all systems go in terms of preparing the guys to win what will be a really tough game in Newport.
“Rob Moffat was a great guy to work with, and I saw first hand just how much energy and passion he brought to the job and to the club. I’ve now been given an opportunity to make sure we continue to progress on the field, and it’s a chance I’m ready to grab with both hands.”
Nick will be speaking to www.edinburghrugby.org at greater length in advance of the Dragons game next week. An extended question and answer feature with the now interim head coach appeared in the match programme for the recent Heineken Cup match against Cardiff Blues.
Haven't had a chance to see the article? Read on...
Nick, you’ve now been with Edinburgh for a year and a half. What were your reasons for coming here, and how has the experience compared to your expectations?
I’d been in the same country and with the same teams for a number of years. Professionally, I needed a new challenge. It’s been really good for me to get away from doing things how I’d always done them. It’s been fantastic working with and learning from different people, experiencing different competitions and living in such a great city.
What are the main differences between Super rugby and the Magners League and Heineken Cup?
The Magners League and Heineken Cup are different in terms of structure, but they are both quality competitions. In Super rugby, you had a long period of pre-season then a really intense, short competition with lots of travelling. That dynamic was a double-edged sword in that there was less time to tinker with your game once you started playing and travelling, but, given the length of the competition, it was easier to maintain a very high level of training and therefore playing intensity.
In Super 12/14 we generally selected the best team every week and that was it. It was a case of picking guys on form, managing workload, travel and recovery, training hard and being very smart in terms of attention to detail. You basically put the foot to the floor for a few months and hung on. Injuries played a massive part.
The longer Northern Hemisphere season is punctuated with autumn internationals, Heineken Cup and the RBS 6 Nations. Other factors also come into play, such as player welfare and the number of games.
How do Scottish players compare in terms of ability and attitude to those you’ve worked with previously?
The guys here work hard on their skills and have a fantastic attitude; they are good professionals. As in Australia, the opportunity is there for every individual to make every repetition, every session count so that there is continual improvement in the team.
The biggest difference I’ve found is in terms of communication in training and in games. The challenge for us is to get keep encouraging that instant and direct accountability between players, particularly at training. This is sometimes seen as the job of the leaders and while that is true, we want all players to take on responsibility.
Your main responsibility has been defence. How do you feel the team has come on in this regard?
While I am far from satisfied about where we’re at, I feel in general we’ve made improvements in the last year or so. The way we finished last season was extremely disappointing and I still carry a fair bit of anger around about that because it diluted some of the good things we had done.
This season we’ve defended better as a group and shown a bit more steel. Our appetite for contact has improved. There is a long way to go and we must continue to mature as a team. We can’t go from defending really well for a couple of weeks to copping a hiding. It’s my responsibility to ensure that doesn’t happen.
It’s about consistency. Look at the Glasgow game in Maryhill: as a group we defended really well, we were well organised, we were aggressive…but only for 70 minutes. We missed eight tackles in the whole game, but they were all in the last 10 minutes, and we lost the game.
Against Northampton down there, we conceded three soft tries late on. Everyone maintaining mental intensity is our biggest hurdle. It comes from communication and accountability - these are the things that, when blokes are fatigued, drive effort, aggression and limit the opportunities to “knock off”. Near enough is not good enough.
