joe soap wrote:doedin wrote: perhaps we just need to be more selective and focus on quality rather than quantity? .
yes, we should have not signed journeymen like Manu, Hardie, Bresler and gone for quality instead. doh!
Edinburgh are not Toulon, There is a limit on how many"big" players the can sign. Edinburgh have to shop in Aldi, not Waitrose, except for the occasional forays, and that is not a bad hit rate, injuries aside. The injuries would be Solomons fault as well no doubt.
And for every Manu and a Bressler there was a Blaauw, a Strauss, a Bezudenhoit, a Lutui, an Atiga, a Dominquez, a Leonardi, a McLennan, a Te Rure, a Katoa, an Andress and a Hilterbrand for example. The likes of Helu, Allen, Tovey, Fihaki, Rasolea and Scholes have hardly been a resounding success either. To be fair to Solomons Bradley started it with some dodgy signings like Yapp and Reece for example. We got lucky with the Hardie signing I seem to remember which came through the SRU channels and he was placed with us? I accept that we are shopping in the Aldi rather than the Waitrose but I don't think the 'scatter gun’ recruitment approach has really worked for us. Nel, Dell, Bressler, Toolis and CDP look like SH keepers in the current squad but we went through a lot of rubbish over the past 3 years to get to them!
I think Di Rollo has a point in that there was a lot of SH dross that came into the squad during the Bradley and Solomons era and, with the benefit of hindsight this hasn’t had a positive impact on Embra rugby, our current position is ample proof of this. I also agree with his comment that the ‘bigger' signings haven’t had the desired impact on the team. You will need to ask Solomons if he was at fault for the injuries.