Everitt insists signing of younger Tuipulotu won’t block new talent
Edinburgh coach hits back at critics of move for Australian
SEAN EVERITT has refuted suggestions that the signing of Mosese Tuipulotu will be detrimental to academy players coming through the Scottish system. Tuipulotu will move to Edinburgh in the summer and join in time for pre-season beginning at the end of July. The expectation is that he will follow in the footsteps of older brother Sione and become a member of Gregor Townsend’s Scotland squad soon after.
He’s already Scottish-qualified through his grandmother and could even make the trip to the Americas as part of Townsend’s summer tour. Tuipulotu has been on the radar of Scotland for a while and Everitt felt he needed another young centre to compete with Matt Currie, Mark Bennett, James Lang and Chris Dean and now he’s got his man.
In the Scotland U20 squad the likes of Johnny Ventisei and Kerr Yule are both signed to Glasgow Warriors and Everitt isn’t sure there are many options at centre for him.
But he believes players in the mould of Freddy Douglas, Liam McConnell, Ollie Blyth-Lafferty and Euan McVie will get their chances at Edinburgh in the future but the time needs to be right and they need to be developed to a level where it won’t harm them, because he has seen too many instances of that in South Africa with Currie Cup teams.
He said: “I felt we were in need of another you centre. We do have really good centres at the club in Mark Bennett, Chris Dean, James Lang and obviously a young Matt Currie, and if you look to the future of Edinburgh Rugby and if we want to build within the club it’s good that we have guys coming through the system.
“We all know that he’s 23 years old, he’s part of the Waratahs Super Rugby squad at the moment and we want to develop his game so that one day he can play for Scotland.
“We did have other options earlier on in this season with guys in other countries but with a guy like Mosese coming up as an qualified player already it just makes sense that we assist in helping develop Scottish rugby.
“I can only comment for Edinburgh Rugby. I know that Glasgow have got a number of young centres coming through, and they fill those positions in the Scotland Under-20 team.
“I think it would be naive to think
that under-20 players that play in their age group can compete at the highest level of the URC. If you look at the team that played on the weekend, and you look at the Leinsters and the Sharks for instance, a player has to be of a certain level to be able to develop and perform. And that’s something that we sometimes get wrong.
“The top competitions aren’t there to develop. They need to develop and dominate in their age group to be able to be selected.
“So coming through a system in South Africa where youngsters are pushed, for instance in the Currie Cup because there’s a lack of depth while the URC is on the go, it has hurt a couple of players because some of them aren’t emotionally mature enough to deal with issues of URC rugby or Currie Cup for that matter.
“It’s about players earning their stripes to play in the URC. At Edinburgh at the moment we don’t have young centres in our academy that are showing that potential.
“We’ve got Matt Currie who has had an unbelievable season for us. Whether it be at 12, 13 or on the wing, he’s always first down on the team sheet when we’re doing selection.
“So when you don’t have those type of players, you need to find players. It doesn’t matter whether the player was born in Scotland or not, he’s Scottish qualified.
“We have guys in South Africa that might not have been born there but have gone on to play for South Africa. Likewise in other countries. I don’t see that as an issue.”
Tuipulotu was a player who hadn’t been fully committed to Scotland prior to this and had admitted he wanted to play for Australia, where he was born.
But that appears to have now changed with his move to the capital and Everitt revealed he spoke to Sione about his younger brother prior to getting the deal done.
He’s urged fans to allow him to develop, though, and not to expect a carbon copy of the elder of the two Tuipulotu’s – but did admit he’s looking forward to seeing them face off next season when Edinburgh face Glasgow.
He continued: “It’s interesting to have brothers playing against each other. I’ve been part of that before.
“Unfortunately, Duhan [van der Merwe] couldn’t play against his brother when his brother visited here with the Bulls because that would also have been an interesting one.
“In South Africa it tends to happen quite often that brothers play against each other so it is interesting but at the end of the day it’s a game of rugby and the emotion and the family bond tends to drift away for those 80 minutes.
“He’s not quite where Sione is at the moment and we don’t want to compare him with his brother because they are two different types of player, but he is a big young fellow with good offload skills and he has the ability to get you across the gainline. And at times that’s something that’s been lacking for us.
“We need to understand where he’s at. He’s 23 years old, he is developing as a rugby player and it’s our job as coaches to get him into the national squad.
“I think we all agree that Sione developed his game while he was here in Scotland, so he’s got to go through the same process.
“We’re certainly not comparing him to his brother – they are two different individuals, those with children know they are not all the same. He does bring different attributes to Sione and we look forward to working with him.”