IT had been 16 months since Duhan van der Merwe last played for Edinburgh, and several weeks since he had played at all, but the winger slotted in against Benetton on Saturday night as if he had never been away.
If the 27-year-old was nervous on his second debut, it did not show. If he was a little rusty . . . Well, there was no sign of that either as he ran in two of his team’s nine tries in their 53-8 win over the Italians.
Granted, most of his team-mates were those he had left behind when he joined Worcester in the summer of 2021. But there were a couple of unfamiliar factors, all the same, that a less robust player might have taken more time to come to terms with.
