Richard Cockerill: Edinburgh '˜100 per cent' should have beaten Montpellier

Richard Cockerill was impressed by Edinburgh's display in Montpellier but lamented the result. Pic: Getty

Edinburgh went down to a 21-15 Heineken Champions Cup defeat at the GGL Stadium, but had two tries ruled out by referee Wayne Barnes and held their hosts to a scoreless second half as they headed home with a losing-bonus point.

“My God, it is very frustrating because 100 per cent we should have won it. I’ve got nothing but credit for our lads,” said Cockerill, pictured, whose side face the second  Top 14 club in the pool, three-times winners Toulon, in round two. “We take a bonus point, it’s 4-1 in the first round and they’ve still got to come to us. Toulon won’t look forward to coming to us if we play like that.

“Now we’ve got to improve parts of our game and make sure when Toulon come to Murrayfield we put in that same type of performance.

“A little bit went against us in terms of the officiating. A scrum went round on their line, we scored and it was offside.

“Was it a scrum penalty back to us? Then there was a clear-cut opportunity with Magnus Bradbury in the hole, but Simon Berghan wanted to score and ran across him – that was the game – winning moment and you have to be cool and collected.

“We’ve got to learn from those experiences. The Edinburgh team has never had a real steel about it, but this one has. We’ve got some devil about us and we want to play and we want to win.”

Cockerill confirmed Edinburgh’s first try scorer, Stuart McInally, went off at half-time due to illness. “He ran out of steam,” he said.