Give Edinburgh the credit we're due, says Richard Cockerill

It is never difficult, as PG Wodehouse didn't quite say, to distinguish between Richard Cockerill and a ray of sunshine, and that was after his team completed back-to-back victories over Glasgow to retain the 1872 Cup.
Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill. Picture: SNSEdinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill. Picture: SNS
Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill. Picture: SNS

The Edinburgh coach was irked with some of the coverage of last weekend’s game which put the win down to Glasgow’s failings rather than any excellence from Edinburgh.

“I’m delighted with the performance,” declared the Englishman. “The players deserve the credit. They played really well and deserved to win. It’s a really big step forward in our development as a team.

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“Last week was put down to them not executing or whatever, and lots of things were said about how boring we were. But we’ve come here, played all the rugby and were the better side. It [last weekend’s coverage] was more about how disappointing they were than how good we were. Today we’ve proved we were good last week and we were probably better this week.”

The two teams are diametric opposites. While Glasgow’s game is all about pace, Edinburgh’s is all about power and there was only one winner yesterday, with Pierre Schoeman, pictured right, winning the man-of-the-match award.

In one cameo the visiting loosehead caught the ball above his head just as Jonny Gray moved in for the kill, and still sat the big Scotland lock on to his backside.

“We don’t play better or worse [than Glasgow], it’s just different,” Cockerill said, defending his team’s tactics. “We’ve got a good pack, we work hard at it, so why wouldn’t you use it as a weapon? It makes sense, if you find a weakness, keep going at the weakness. Simple as that.

“Love or hate us, we play how we play and there are two sides that have won here this season, us and Saracens. That’s pretty good company to keep!”

Glasgow coach Dave Rennie had moaned last week about Edinburgh’s “illegal” scrummaging and he did the same yesterday but only after promising not to “grizzle” about the refereeing.

“It’s frustrating from our point of view but in the end you have to deal with what the referee is dealing with out there,” said Rennie.

“It was pretty similar to last week wasn’t it?” he continued. “They gave us a lot of ball and we weren’t sharp enough with it.

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“We have to create opportunities better than we did tonight and we have to be more clinical. It was our hallmark up to a couple of weeks ago. It’s disappointing but I’m not going to panic.”

With just one more league match left before those crunch European games against Cardiff and Saracens, it seems as good a time as any.