Tom English column: ‘Why Edinburgh should not be desperate to renew Van der Merwe’s deal’

Sean Everitt was asked a few weeks back about the growing rumours linking Duhan van der Merwe with a move to France once his Edinburgh contract expires in the summer.

Everitt said the club was “desperate” to keep him. If they are as desperate as Everitt suggests, then they’re wrong.

To borrow a line from Ian McGeechan, Van der Merwe is a Test match animal. He’s not an animal for club rugby. His financial cost to Edinburgh? Significant. His return on that cost? A whole lot less.

It wasn’t always this way. When Van der Merwe joined Edinburgh in 2017, club rugby was his be-all and end-all. He scored 10 tries in 18 games in his first season, 10 in 23 in his second and 11 in 19 in his third.

Then he became a Test player and all those Edinburgh tries started to dry up and were replaced by scores on the bigger stage.

The Edinburgh wing has 28 tries in 41 Tests. It’s thunderously impressive. In his four full seasons as an international he’s scored eight in nine, four in nine, five in nine and 11 in 13. The stats are off the scale.

His numbers for Edinburgh in those seasons? One in seven, two in eight, seven in 17. That’s not counting his season at Worcester. In relative terms, Van der Merwe draws a huge wage. If Scotland are still getting the benefit of his Test tries wouldn’t they be better off getting him off the wage bill?

Edinburgh, toiling badly again, are in need of a shake-up and cutting loose some of their biggest (and underperforming) earners is not a bad place to start a required rebuild.

Van der Merwe is by turns thrilling and infuriating. He has extraordinary running power and a penchant for scoring mesmeric tries, but nobody has ever accused him of being a fiend for work or a complete rugby player.

The (sadly injured) Kyle Steyn is a far more rounded performer; less dynamic but far more consistent. Kyle Rowe, tough and intelligent, is playing better than Van der Merwe right now.

There’s a default setting with Van der Merwe. He drifts in and out of matches for Edinburgh. Whole games can pass him by. He can be defensively suspect and weak in the air.

But the reason he’s undroppable for Scotland is that knowledge of what he can do when the ball is in his hands and his head is in the game. Pure devastation. Nobody else can do what the big man can do. You just wish he’d do it more often.

When fit, he’ll always be picked for Scotland, but Edinburgh ought to be having conversations internally now. Is he worth it? Should they really be “desperate” to renew his deal? Does the reality of Van der Merwe at Edinburgh, as opposed to the potential, justify the vast expense?

In his time as a Scotland player Van der Merwe has a wonderful try return of 0.68 per game. Since he became a Scotland player, his try return for Edinburgh is 0.35 per game.

He’ll most likely come into his own again this autumn. Everybody at Edinburgh would be entitled to ask: “Where’s that Duhan when he plays for us?”

The club has many issues. What to do with their star wing is just one of them.