United Rugby Championship: Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh gear up for marathon campaign
Edinburgh, under the control of new coach Sean Everitt, kick off their campaign with one of the softest openers they could have hoped for - away to the Dragons who finished 15th of 16 in the two seasons since the South African heavyweights joined the league.
From one extreme to another. On Sunday, Glasgow host Leinster, one of the most challenging games on the rota. Both sides will be missing a battalion of Test players, but Leinster's reserves are ridiculous, top notch operators accelerating through their schools and their academies at a startling rate.
Glasgow lost 40-5 to Leinster last season but, mostly, they broke even against the big seven in the URC - the top three provinces and the four South African sides. Won four, lost four, Edinburgh would dream about such numbers, so let's begin there.
The men from the capital lost 12 of 18 last season and finished a dismal 12th, five places below where they finished in the previous campaign. Against the big three from Ireland and the South African giants they registered a winning return of a big fat zero. The previous season they won two from seven.
They have a good squad peppered with experienced international players and splashes of genuine class. What they've delivered in the last number of seasons has been pretty lamentable.
The URC is a tough school and it's only going to get tougher as the top teams grow. Even still, Edinburgh have been punching well below their weight and Everitt, formerly coach of the Sharks, is now charged with reversing their fortunes.
They have a chance to go from two from two with the Dragons first and the Lions at home the week after and they could do with getting off to a flier. Edinburgh have had a ruinous capacity to lose games in bunches and that's a habit they need to rid themselves of.
Last season they lost three in a row early on, then lost four in a row, then won one and lost another four on the spin. Mike Blair, the previous coach, was flailing at that point, but his players didn't exactly help. Given their squad, Edinburgh should be pushing hard for top-eight, not languishing among the also-rans.
Ben Healy is their new fly-half and he should be a terrific addition. A good tactical brain, an iron resolve, a dependable goal-kicker, Healy is the kind of controlling 10 that this team has been crying out for.
Ewan Ashman has come in at hooker and Scott Steele, the back-up Scotland scrum-half from 2021, have also joined along with props Javan Sebastian and Robin Hislop.
Everitt's main task is to remove the flakiness that has returned after Richard Cockerill appeared to have chased it away.
The number of games they blew from promising positions last season was head-wrecking. Everitt's job is to eliminate that self-defeating weakness. New coaching and new psychology are required if Edinburgh are to raise any kind of gallop.
The draw hasn't been kind to Glasgow. Every side wants to get out of the traps quickly so they're in a strong position for when all the Test players return to the fold. But after Leinster, last-year's semi-finalists, the Warriors have the Stormers, who lost in the final, in round three and Ulster, who were second in the overall league table, in round six.
That's a tricky slog for Franco Smith's team, but they should still be feeling pretty good about themselves. Last season delivered nothing in terms of trophies but they made the quarter-finals of the URC and the final of the European Challenge Cup.
The way they lost both knockouts (at home to Munster in the URC and a proper roasting in Dublin against Toulon in the Challenge Cup) was sobering, but they played some outstanding stuff to get there.
Glasgow were a mess when Smith took over, but he made steady progress in his first season. Building on that will not be easy. Kyle Rowe and Facundo Cordero, both wingers, have been brought in along with Henco Venter, the veteran back-row, and Greg Peterson, the veteran's veteran second-row, but none of them could be mistaken for marquee.
Glasgow look short at 10 and it's surprising they haven't made a move to strengthen in that area. Tom Jordan, Duncan Weir and Ross Thompson is not a stellar cast in such a pivotal position. Elsewhere, the Warriors are a well-balanced squad with enough depth to go far again, so long as their 10s stand up to the challenge.
The minimum for Glasgow and Edinburgh is top eight and a place in the play-offs. Anything else is failure. The campaign stretches on and on, into early June for the quarter-finals, mid-June for the semis with the final only taking place on the 22nd of the month. For the contenders, a marathon awaits.
