Edinburgh did Alan Solomons the honour of saying he had decided to stand down as head coach, as befitting his standing within the game, but it seems unlikely to have been the veteran South African’s decision.
He signed a year’s extension earlier this year, a move that raised more than a few eyebrows. Edinburgh were going reasonably well at the time, but it had been largely anticipated that Solomons would complete three years at the helm and hand on to assistants Duncan Hodge and Stevie Scott.
The wisdom of that extension was almost immediately undermined as the team went into freefall in the PRO12, eventually finishing 9th – actually a regression on what had occurred in his first two seasons. The extension itself lasted four games into this new season before he’s left.
Solomons clearly should have departed in the summer. He had partly fulfilled his stated aim of building a foundation for the club based on young Scottish players, but progress has been maddeningly slow and the team’s conservative style has been a major turn-off to the capital’s rugby fans.
There is a base there to build on, but it needed to be handed to Hodge and Scott in the summer. Letting Solomons go now simply compounds the error of that extension that shouldn’t have been offered.
