Hardie has no future at Edinburgh
SCOTLAND flanker John Hardie will depart Edinburgh Rugby at the end of his troubled season at the club after being deemed surplus to requirements by head coach Richard Cockerill.
The 29-year-old, who was recruited from New Zealand three years ago and immediately intro- duced to the national squad for that year’s World Cup, underwent a lengthy suspension earlier this year as a result of allegations over off-field misdemeanours, but in announcing his departure yesterday, Cockerill insisted that Hardie’s release was unrelated to that.
“John won’t be staying. He is the same as a lot of other guys. We have a lot of young guys coming through and financially we need to spread our costs,” he explained. “It is getting value out of our budget. We have guys like Jamie Ritchie and Luke Crosbie coming through. Both can play seven and are doing well. Hamish [Watson] is first choice for Scotland. Add in John Barclay who can play along the back row, [Viliame] Matta, [Magnus] Bradbury, [Lewis] Carmichael, there are a lot of good back-row players.
“We need to get value from the squad. We are trying to get a balance from forwards to back and want balance through the squad.”
Cockerill went some way towards emphasising that point about the imbalanced nature of their squad when wryly suggesting that the presence of Blair Kinghorn on the wing in Scotland’s starting XV in Dublin on Saturday represented something of a breakthrough.
“We’ve actually got a back who’s starting for Scotland. It’s unusual,” he observed.
Hardie is meanwhile among a quintet of Edinburgh players who have been released from Scotland duty this week in order to be available to play against Munster in the Guinness PRO14 on Friday evening, along with Mark Bennett, Bradbury, Cornel du Preez and Ben Toolis.