More than one Irishman giving Scotland an Edge at Rugby World Cup

Ben Healy may provide the most tangible and visible link between the Ireland and Scotland teams but he's not the only one. Antrim native David Edge is Gregor Townsend's team manager 

CELTIC COUSINS: Scotland’s Ben Healy celebrates scoring a try against Romania. He's not the only Irishman involved with the Scotland squad, however. Pic: INPHO/Craig Watson

Ben Healy may provide the most tangible and visible link between the Ireland and Scotland teams that meet in Paris on Saturday but he isn’t the only one.

Prop Rory Sutherland spent a short time with Ulster last season after the financial implosion at Worcester Warriors while David Edge, a native of Antrim, now finds himself as Gregor Townsend’s team manager.

A former member of Ballymena RFC, Edge left as a teenager to study at Stirling University. He is 27 years in his adopted home now but the traces of a Northern Ireland accent have yet to be erased.

This weekend will be that bit more special.

“We haven’t actually beaten them since I became manager so I’m looking forward to playing them again,” he said. “We play each other every year so we obviously know each other very well but obviously being Irish and supporting them growing up it is an even more special day for me at a Rugby World Cup.” 

Scotland’s last win against Ireland was claimed at Murrayfield in 2017 but Edge has different reasons for remembering that day given his father suffered a heart attack on leaving the stadium not long after Greig Laidlaw had kicked the winning penalty.

“We’d left the stadium literally just as Greig was taking that kick,” he told the SRU website in 2021. “We walked up to where we were parked near the Murrayfield Hotel and on that hill on the way up he got a sore stomach and got in the car and had a heart attack on the way home.” 

Edge performed CPR on his father, who thankfully pulled through.

His involvement with Scotland started with the team manager role at Heriots before moving up the ladder and filling the same brief with the national U20s. That was a part-time post held in tandem with a full-time gig in the SRU’s development department.

The promotion up to his current duties came about when he took over from Gav Scott after the last World Cup and, while he had time and opportunity to learn the ropes under his predecessor, there was nothing to prepare him for the challenge that was covid.

The team manager role is a complex web of responsibilities and the premise of it all is to ensure that the operation runs smoothly. Like a good referee, the team manager should exist in the background. If they are noticed then it’s because there is a problem.

Covid threw everything up in the air. Hotels and travel tend to be arranged 9-12 months in advance at the best of times. During the pandemic these things were being put together with as little as six weeks’ notice. It was harum-scarum stuff.

The plan had been that Scotland would visit South Africa and New Zealand in the summer of 2020. Edge had already visited New Zealand on a five-day whistle-stop tour during which his luggage was lost and he found himself washing and drying the same clothes night after night.

All for nothing.

This World Cup must have been a piece of Dundee cake by comparison. The SRU has had a partnership with the third-tier French club Stade Nicois club since 2017. At its core it has been used as an alternative development pathway but it has proved its worth now as a team base for this tournament.

Edge reckoned the number of visits made to the south of France in the run up to the competition had hit double figures. There were team trips out to the area beforehand as well and the result has been a home-from-home that seemed to hit all the right spots before their final departure this week for Paris.

In most ways, Nice has mirrored the team’s setup back home in Oriam where the hotel, gym, and training pitches are all within kicking distances of each other, but it’s inevitable that some things go askew when dealing with a 33-man squad and its long logistical tail.

The memory of Townsend and his players sweating under a midday sun in Nice for almost an hour during their official welcoming ceremony early last month springs to mind here but Edge was unruffled by it afterwards.

“You definitely have to be neurotic [to do the job]. There is a sense of panic that you just keep to yourself, and then a sense of calmness so you can look like you know what’s going on.”