2025/26 Celtic Challenge so far: Where are Scottish teams at?

The Celtic Challenge resumes this weekend after a break and the two Scottish clubs involved will be hoping to restart with a bang after mixed – and largely frustrating – campaigns so far.

Round seven of the 10 regular season rounds take place on Saturday and Sunday with Brython Thunder hosting Edinburgh, Gwalia Lightning taking on Clovers and Glasgow welcoming Wolfhounds to Scotstoun.

Come March 7th, the regular season will be over and the top four will play semi-finals on March 21st with the final at Hive Stadium in the Scottish capital on March 28th.

The way things are going just now, it looks unlikely that a Scottish club will be in the final in Scotland unless one of Edinburgh or Glasgow can really hit their straps over the next few weeks.

In six rounds of regular season action between December 20th and February 1st, Edinburgh won just one game to sit fifth in the Irish-Welsh-Scottish six-team standings with six points.

Glasgow also won just one of their first six games though picked up more four-try and losing bonus points and are on 11 points in fourth spot.

With the majority of Scottish Rugby’s contracted players playing in the PWR or in France, perhaps Edinburgh and Glasgow are not realistically expected to keep pace with the likes of unbeaten Irish leaders Wolfhounds who have a squad with full internationals running through it, but this competition is a golden chance for the next crop of talent coming through to show what they are all about.

This is the start of a new era for the national team with players having retired, a new coaching team appointed including Sione Fukofuka, Ioan Cunningham and Dave Butchers- and all roads leading to the Women’s Rugby World Cup in Australia in 2029.

Some young, uncapped players such as Aila Ronald for Edinburgh, Holland Bogan and Sky Phimister have put in consistent performances for their sides in the Celtic Challenge campaign to date, but others are still striving to find the consistency needed to compete at this level week in and week out.

The break in action probably came at a good time for both squads with six matches and lots of travelling in a seven-week spell testing them out, especially given that most of the players are not full-time and are juggling their Celtic Challenge commitments with studies and/or work.

Edinburgh’s highlight of this year’s Celtic Challenge campaign so far came in round two when they defeated Glasgow 31-25 with a bonus point after a cracking clash at the Hive.

When Glasgow led 10-0 after 30 minutes and had dominated possession up to that point it looked like they might be on the way to an away win.

However, Edinburgh recovered to trail just 15-14 at the interval and then really kicked on to win 31-25 and earn five points to Glasgow’s two.

After that one – which had come off the back of a 35-7 opening loss at Wolfhounds – Edinburgh head coach Claire Cruikshank said: “hopefully we can build from here”, but since then her side have struggled to find their best form.

Defeats have come against Wolfhounds, Gwalia (2) and, most disappointing last time out, bottom side Brython with just one bonus point picked up versus the latter.

In the home game against Brython, Edinburgh lost 14-7 and were toothless in attack, something they will look to rectify as soon as possible.

Glasgow got their campaign off to a flying start with an impressive 36-17 bonus point win away to Brython in round one and it was the club’s first ever win on their travels in what is the third year of the competition in its current guise.

Winger Sky Phimister scored two tries in the first half at Parc y Scarlets to lead the way and, at that stage, there was a real excitement bubbling around what Glasgow could achieve this term.

Since then they have lost five games in a row, picked up six bonus points and certainly have not had problems attacking – 25 points coming versus Edinburgh, 19 against Gwalia, 31 versus Clovers, 26 against Wolfhounds and 31 in the Clovers’ rematch – but the issue has been at the other end.

They have let teams build up leads and then have been chasing a number of games, the worst example of this coming in round five when they were 40-0 down at half-time away to Wolfhounds before losing 52-26.

And after the round six 38-31 home reverse to Clovers, head coach Lindsey Smith said: “We do show that we’re pretty brave and we’ve got a bit of relentlessness about us, but I would like it more if we didn’t challenge ourselves as much in the first half of games and leave it all to the second half.”

With semi-final places to play for – and players fighting for Six Nations squad places – a big few weeks are coming up for Edinburgh and Glasgow.