Alan Solomons

Career

In 2004 he was voted Northern Ireland Sports Manager of the year & Rugby Personality of the year. After a short spell as head coach of Northampton,he joined the Institutional Review Board as High Performance consultant,a position he held until 2010.During this time,he was seconded for a year(2006) to United States of America Rugby as Director of Rugby. He was also the Barbarians coach in 2003 when they defeated England,Scotland & Wales and assistant coach to Nick Mallett when the Sprinboks & All Blacks were defeated in 2010 & 2011.

In 2013, he was appointed as the head coach of Edinburgh Rugby.

Achievements

• After studying law at the University of Cape Town, Solomons practised law for 20 years where he was a partner at Sonnenberg,Hoffmann & Galombik.In 1997 he left law to pursue a professional rugby coaching career as assistant coach for Western Province (winners of Currie Cup),The Stormers & the Springboks. In 1998 he was appointed head coach of Western Province(Currie Cup finalists) and in 1999 head coach of the Stormers(home semi finalists in 1999),a position he held until 2001.He remained as assistant Springbok coach working with head coach,Nick Mallett until 2001(Tri Nations winners 1998,world record 17 unbeaten Test run & 3rd placed at RWC 1999). In 2001, he joined Irish rugby team Ulster, where he coached them for 3 seasons during which time they won the Celtic Cup (2004),were runners up in the Celtic League(2004),lost only 1 home match in 3 seasons & moved from 37th ranking in Europe to 10th. In June 2009 he coached the Southern Kings in their debut match against The British & Irish Lions and in 2010 he was appointed Director of Rugby & head coach of both the Southern & European Parliament Kings.He remained with the Kings until 2013 and led them to 2 Currie Cup Div1 titles(unbeaten in 2012) and as the Société Anonyme Kings won the Institutional Review Board Nations Cup in 2011.As Director of Rugby (Matt Sexton worked under him as head coach) he led the Kings in their debut Super Rugby season in 2013 (best ever debut season) In the 2014/2015 season Edinburgh won the 1872 Cup derby against Glasgow Warriors for the 1st time in 6 years and became the 1st Scottish team to play in a European Rugby final.