Thompson is ready to bring attacking intent to Edinburgh

It was a slightly soggy start to Edinburgh’s season on Saturday lunchtime as players and punters mingled amid the showers during a “Picnic on the Pitch” event at Hive Stadium.
Through it all, Ross Thompson was a ray of sunshine, doing the rounds of his new supporters before taking to the stage for a Q&A on the mic. Afterwards up in the stands, the 25-year-old fly half looked and sounded every inch a man already at home in these fresh surroundings, desperate to kickstart both his own career and Edinburgh’s hitherto faltering attack.
Thompson has moved across from Glasgow after a couple of frustrating years, first on account of a succession of injuries and then the apparent indifference of Franco Smith, the Warriors head coach. He had the option to sign on again at Scotstoun, but decided to throw his lot in with a club who share his ambition to make up for lost time.
It is a homecoming of sorts — Thompson grew up in the capital, was head boy at Stewart’s Melville College and captained them to a Schools Cup triumph, but had had minimal involvement with the professional club’s academy prior to heading west to study law at the University of Glasgow, during which time he signed for Glasgow Hawks.
Much more important than any sense of coming full circle was the sense that the switch made in the here and now. “It’s been a really welcome change for me,” Thompson acknowledged. “It [the move] ticked a lot of boxes. I’m really looking forward to having a chance to really compete for a starting 10 jersey.
“I remember coming to the odd Edinburgh game when I was younger. I remember going to the Toulouse quarter-final [in the 2012 Heineken Cup] and a few Friday night games with my old man and brother. But at that stage I think I probably just wanted to play professional rugby, rather than specifically for Edinburgh.”
Thompson’s arrival will take some of the heat off Ben Healy, who started all 18 of last season’s URC games and was afield for all but 20 minutes of those matches. A big summer focus at the club has been on how to break down the frequent blockages experienced when it came to servicing prime attacking threats such as Duhan van der Merwe. A new attack coach, Scott Mathie, is now is situ and will help Sean Everitt determine which of Healy and Thompson gets the nod as first-choice pivot. That decision is not as clear-cut as some may imagine, especially with the latter boasting a proven ability to manipulate defences through both his slick distribution and pinpoint kicks.
“I think that [improving the attack] is something I can definitely help contribute towards,” Thompson said. “There’s been a real focus on the attack so far, even just in the two weeks that I’ve been here. I know that when Sean came in he said there were other areas that they needed to focus on to begin with. They spoke a lot about their kicking and being a little bit more pragmatic.
“Attack was maybe on the back foot a bit. So it’s definitely been a big focus point. You can see that in the training that we’re doing as well. There’s definitely a real attack-minded focus in training. Hopefully it’ll mean some exciting rugby this year.
“I think it’s about the balance. I don’t think it’s going to be just full-on attack from anywhere. We’re not going to be running it from our own 5m line or anything like that. But with the athletes you’ve got in the forwards here and some of the backs, especially the outside backs, it’s ridiculous.
“As a 10, my job is to try to create a bit of space and get the ball to them in as much space as possible and let them do what they can do. With the players we’ve got, we should be scoring tries.
“I get on well with Ben, and I know that competition brings out the best in me. If you’re in a place where you just turn up and know you’re going to be playing, you’re not going to keep pushing yourself.
“But when you know you have to turn up every day and perform in training, it’s going to only make you better and make the squad better. I guess they’ve done that in centres as well, with Matt [Scott] and Mosese [Tuipulotu] coming in. Hopefully it just drives the squad up as a whole.”
Last season, there were times when Thompson felt like he was hitting his head against a brick wall in his efforts to get a look-in ahead of Tom Jordan and Duncan Weir. Although he was on the bench for two of Glasgow’s URC knock-out games, scoring a try against the Stormers, it was hard to shake the sense that Smith did not fully fancy or trust him.
“It definitely was difficult,” Thompson said. “There were times where it felt like it didn’t really matter what I did. I was chasing a lost cause and I couldn’t seem to get a consistent run of games. No matter how you trained or how you played, things weren’t changing.
“From my conversations with Sean, I know that if you perform and train well here, you’re going to get that consistent run of games.
“Did I knock on Franco’s door for an explanation? I did a bit to begin with but I’m not going to go every single week — I wouldn’t have been like that. I had a really good relationship with Nigel [Carolan, the attack coach] so I spoke to him a lot and always felt like I could be really honest with him.
“I would never go up and say, ‘Why am I not playing? I think I’m better than him’. I’d be like, ‘What can I be doing more to play?’. I think as long as you’re doing it in a positive way then it’s good. I don’t think anyone can look badly on you for asking those questions. As long as it’s always driven towards what you can be doing better, it shows you care.”
Thompson was a travelling reserve for the final in Pretoria, and alongside Scott, of Leicester Tigers, and Paul Hill, of Northampton Saints, he is one of three title winners whose experience Everitt believes can rub off on an underachieving squad.
“I guess it [the URC success] was a little bit bittersweet for me,” he said. “Obviously I didn’t play as much as I wanted to but it was a nice way to end my time in Glasgow. There were a lot of people there who had worked unbelievably hard to get that club in the position that they’re in — even people before who weren’t part of that [final].
“So the club definitely deserved it and the whole squad deserved to win it. I’d love to repeat it here — it would be nice to go two in a row, and there’s absolutely no reason why it can’t happen.
“I can already see that there’s not a whole lot of differences between the two environments. There’s definitely the chance to do it here as well, so hopefully we can this season.”
Thompson, who won his fourth and fifth Scotland caps last month in North America, had recently bought a flat in Glasgow so, for the moment, is doing a spot of commuting alongside a few nights back at his folks’. In every other respect, however, this feels like a big step forward for all concerned.