'That would have got me the sack at Leicester' - How Richard Cockerill reconstructed Edinburgh Rugby
For a painfully long time, Edinburgh were viewed as a joke.
A meek and malleable laughing stock festering at the heart of this magnificent rugby city. A squad of underachieving internationals that staggered from one lowly league finish to the next, wedged in amongst the detritus and also-rans at the foot of the old Pro12 for the seven years since its inception.
Sure, they delivered the odd scalp, a tiny glimmer of what they could really do – then promptly delivered garbage again. Their home was alternately a grossly ill-fitting cavern where they have never truly belonged or rutted club parks with amateur facilities.
What’s more, Edinburgh knew what they were in the eyes of their opposition. They knew teams would fetch up at towering Murrayfield with its tsunami of empty seats or little Myreside where supporters huddle on grass banks and in makeshift stands and expect to turn them over.
They knew they were thought of as one-dimensional, mentally feeble and bereft of the guile and leadership to tackle adversity.
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Interviewing stand-in head coach Duncan Hodge as Edinburgh embarked on a heinous club-record losing run a little over a year ago felt like kicking a wounded kitten. He, like his club, was hopelessly lost. No identity, no pride, no sign of an end to the tail-spin. Edinburgh flat-lined and were in dire need of someone to arrive wielding a set of very powerful defibrillators.
We in Scotland knew Richard Cockerill by reputation more so than experience. We remember the snarling, bull-headed England hooker who faced down the All Blacks haka and scribed an autobiography with enough profanity to make Malcolm Tucker blush in which, it seemed, on every second page Cockerill engaged in some act of violence or other.
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We recall the trophy-laden years at Leicester, the ABC club, the ferocity with which he pursued success. And of course we’d heard all about the sharp tongue and disciplinary rap sheet as long as the Royal Mile.
What we didn’t yet appreciate about Edinburgh’s new head coach was his brain. Few of us had encountered Cockerill the thinker, the tactician who can be warm and self-deprecating in his media duties while driving standards with relentless vigour on the training paddock. The man-manager who had indiscipline and scandal thrown at him months into his mountainous rebuilding job and handled both brilliantly.
Cockerill saw a club over 140 years old with gaping holes in its history, a place he felt too many players had used as a refuge to “play a few games of rugby, to get fit for Test matches” with little regard for the badge on their chests.
His first order of business in Scotland’s capital was to hold one-to-one meetings with each member of his new squad. These were unerringly frank exchanges where players were confronted and challenged. Many Cockerill reckoned to be significantly overweight. Grant Gilchrist was told his new boss had heard plenty hype about his qualities but seen nothing in his play to justify it.
Scotland Sevens’ much-vaunted strength and conditioning coach Nick Lumley was brought in and Edinburgh got much fitter. Many of the players have slimmed down even more this pre-season.
Solomoni Rasolea in action for Edinburgh (Getty Images)
Club stalwart Roddy Grant and defence-focused Calum MacRae were key coaching appointments, as was throwing specialist Simon Hardy, who arrived chiefly to mentor the beleaguered Stuart McInally – a converted hooker who, by his own admission, had never been taught how to throw and “used to s*** myself at every line-out”.
Cockerill prioritised improving what he had and creating a powerful unity in a squad that had been disparate and weak-willed for an age. He ripped up the training schedules, had the players in for breakfast at 07:30 and cleaning up when they were finished. They walked together from one end of Murrayfield to train at the other rather than making the short hop in their cars as they had before.
From day one, nothing was allowed to slip. You mess up a drill, you do it again. You turn up late, you suffer the consequences. Loyalty and accountability were stressed and stressed again. Bit by bit, attitudes changed and the malaise lifted.
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That’s not to say it was all plain sailing. Edinburgh’s winning start to the season came to a crashing halt when they lost at home to Bennetton in round three of the Pro14.
“That result will haunt me forever,” the coach told BBC Scotland in the aftermath. “I didn’t sleep well for two or three days.”
Cockerill went out on a limb appointing Magnus Bradbury, the 22-year-old back-row, club captain and it soon blew up in his face when the player injured his head falling on a night out and then tried to deceive his coach about what had happened.
Then Scotland flanker John Hardie was suspended for alleged cocaine use on another late-night excursion. And marquee summer signing Robbie Fruean sadly succumbed to the heart problems that besieged his career and was forced into early retirement.
Scotland flanker John Hardie (Getty Images)
Amid all this – the chastening home defeat, the injury, the indiscipline – Edinburgh kept progressing. They won games they would never have seen out in years gone by.
The underachievers, McInally and Gilchrist, became outstanding fulcrums and emerged as top performers for Scotland in the autumn and Six Nations that followed.
Blair Kinghorn made himself impossible for Gregor Townsend to ignore and won his first caps. Dougie Fife, who had been consigned to Scotland Sevens, came back and flourished. Burgeoning tyros Luke Crosbie, Murray McCallum and Lewis Carmichael made great strides. Bradbury and Hardie, the latter jettisoned and still without a club, returned from their bans to play key roles.
Cockerill made only a few signings in his first year but they were good ones. Duhan van der Merwe was the best, posting some of the most impressive attacking statistics in the Pro14 despite missing the first two months of the season through injury.
Edinburgh beat all four Irish provinces for the first time in over a decade. Their new-found fitness and mental resilience resulted in late, late wins over Glasgow Warriors, Ulster, Stade Francais and Connacht.
The scale and speed of the transformation was searing and exceeded all expectations – including Cockerill’s. The upshot? Third place in Conference B and a maiden appearance in the play-offs, more wins (15) than ever (their previous Pro12 best was 11) and more points than any other team bar Glasgow Warriors.
They saw off their pesky inter-city rivals, for years the gloriously free-flowing, off-loading darlings of Scottish rugby, to win the 1872 Cup and their season ended with a play-off defeat in Munster’s storied Thomond Park that Edinburgh will feel they ought to have won.
“We’ve got a team people can relate to, can support and walk away at the end of games and say, ‘that’s my team and I’m proud of what they’re trying to do’”, Cockerill said.
It had been a long time coming.
This season will be harder. The element of surprise is gone. Teams will know what Edinburgh are about now and will no longer take them so lightly.
Their third-place finish earned them a seat at Europe’s top table, the Heineken Champions Cup, where they have not dined since 2013, and will bring matches with some of the continent’s best.
Edinburgh will still play to sparse crowds in the Murrayfield bowl until their new, purpose-built ground on the stadium’s back pitches is constructed for next season.
They will probably lose more players to Scotland duty too, but Cockerill is ready for that. He has overhauled his squad much more than he did in his first summer and his new recruits will have to hit the ground running. Nineteen players have gone but the calibre of replacement is exciting.
Murrayfield (Getty Images)
Scotland’s Matt Scott, Henry Pyrgos and Luke Hamilton have all arrived. So has Argentina back Juan Pablo Socino, monstrous South African prop Pierre Schoeman, Italy’s Pietro Ceccarrelli and former New Zealand Under-20 fly-half and captain Simon Hickey. Scotland captain John Barclay has also returned north, although he will not be fit until early next year.
These are all players of Champions Cup pedigree and signings to further energise Edinburgh’s reinvigorated supporters.
The fans have yearned for these days. In a year, Cockerill has banished the depression and thrust the club to new heights. What might he and they achieve in three? What could they do in five?
Cockerill is a winner. His ambitions are great and he insists Edinburgh are “miles” short of where he wants them to be.
“Over the summer everybody keeps congratulating me, but we were [joint] fifth and lost in the quarter-finals. That would have got me the sack at Leicester – in fact I got sacked for less,” he said last week.
The coach extended his contract to 2021 during April. He is in this for the long haul – and what a journey it could be.
Comments on RugbyPass
Who's Jarrad Hohepa?
1 Go to commentsSo let me get this straight. Say you have the dominant scrum. You are 99% sure you can go for a scrum pushover try on the line to win the game. The opposition knows it too. They give away a silly tap kick instead. You are now not allowed to scrum. This is ridiculous! *%@ing the game up as usual! The fact that the attacking teams are not allowed to scrum from a held up over the line is just as ridiculous. Really world rugby? Careful people might start a rebel league called True Rugby or Real Rugby.
72 Go to comments12 subs during a game? How has that been allowed to happen NB? I hate when the game goes in this monopolistic direction closing up shop, it just becomes non sport. Btw have you seen anything of how Liam Coltman was tracking for Lyon? He has just signed to return to Otago though we have a couple of young hookers developing here. He was a popular gentle natured character down here and I’m glad to see him back but maybe he will be a mentor primarily?
4 Go to commentsGreat breakdown and the global politics always confuses me a little. The southern hemisphere seems to be left out a bit but I wouldn’t even know where to start with fixing it. Club challenge could be a step in the right direction
4 Go to commentsSince he coached Free state, from that time onwards, I maintained he was the coach for the Boks. A nice, no nonsense guy with an excellent brain, who gets results.
11 Go to commentswell - they only played against 14 men and had the TMO team on their side - and still should have lost… so actually that makes sense.
32 Go to commentsSouthern hemisphere Rugby is exactly that, boring. Northern Hemisphere Rugby is soooo much more entertaining and better with better players.
2 Go to commentsIf he was to be cited for a dangerous behavior, then it’s natural that he should be. Then NTamack too, yes? And I’ll add a good whataboutism - Yeandle eye-gouging on Richie Arnold: not cited. Eye-gouging. Not high tackle. Eye-gouging. It was on French TV, with French TV directors.
5 Go to commentsReally poorly written rambling piece ..
4 Go to commentsIt was so boring
2 Go to commentspersonally I’d go with : 1. France 2. NZ 3. England 4. Ireland 5. Scotland
32 Go to commentsAndy everything becomes easier with experience therefor counting etc straight after a match becomes easier when you have 100+ caps vs 17 which is the experience you speak from.
160 Go to commentsGetting rid of the Dupont Law is a good thing and ought to have been done months ago! Officially getting rid of the croc roll is a good thing. The law about no scrums from a short arm is well intended in terms of speeding the game up but it’s an overreaction to a clever yet calculated gamble that could have blow up in South Africa’s face if they conceded a penalty from the scrum that was set after Willemse took claimed the mark in the World Cup QF.
72 Go to commentsRassie The GOAT
11 Go to commentsOf their 5 big matches in RWC Scotland and NZ were the easiest. They took a 12-3 lead against NZ and after the red decided it was best to hold the lead and take chances that came. None came and it was tight but they dug a lot deeper in the other two knock out matches. They had trounced NZ in Twickenham in a fixture that NZ must now regret. Psychology was clearly with SA in the final as a result.
32 Go to commentsMy favourite line/exchanges from Chasing the Sun 2. News headline: “SA. The last hurdle in ABs World Cup glory”. Something like that. “You’re all just a hurdle. A hop, skip and a jump”. Coming from Rassie and Jacque. Basically - nobody thinks you’re going to win. You’re just a pushover team. Nobody respects you. When the camera shows the players faces, you can see the effect. You can see the rev meters (die moer metertjies) firing up. Mitchell said he felt it prior to the 19 final. He said to Eddie watching the teams warming up that it was going to be a tough day at the office. Wave a red flag in front of South African, and you can expect a reaction. This is not unique - many teams rev themselves. And Bok teams in particular. With horrific consequences (discipline, poor thinking under pressure) because that’s the drawback to using emotion right? But what this Bok team does better than many since 2007 is channel the emotion and stay on task. Despite the emotion. Why, because while Rassie might play mind games - he talks about creating a safe environment. Listen to his recent honorary doctorate acceptance speech. While he uses psychology he creates psychological safety. He’s a damn fine coach. Can’t wait for Pretoria. It’s going to be a hummer.
11 Go to commentsWhat Rassie does for SA is big. It has helped people to unite and see we can win with the right people in place.
11 Go to commentsTerrible conditions for young players to express themselves just enjoy it guys. As a saffa great to see Ausie youth looking good. Wow SA have some great talent also.
2 Go to commentsYes, another example of French tv directors ensuring that incidents like this are swiftly glossed over for the benefit of their teams…
5 Go to commentsThe prospect of the club match ups across hemispheres is surely appetising for everyone. The reality however, may prove to be slightly different. There are currently two significant driving forces that have delivered to same teams consistently to the latter champions cup stages for years now. The first of those is the yawning gap in finances, albeit delivered by different routes. In France it’s wealthy private owners operating with a higher salary cap by some distance compared to England. In Ireland it’s led by a combination of state tax relief support, private Leinster academy funding and IRFU control - the provincial budgets are not equal! This picture is not going to change anytime soon. The second factor is the EPCR competition rules. You don’t need a PhD. in advanced statistical analysis from oxbridge to see the massive advantage bestowed upon the home team through every ko round of the tournament. The SA teams will gain the opportunity for home ko ties in due course but that could actually polarise the issue even further, just look at their difficulties playing these ties in Europe and then reverse them for the opposition travelling to SA. Other than that, the picture here is unlikely to change either, with heavyweight vested interests controlling the agenda. So what does all this point to for the club world championship? Well the financial differential between the nh and sh teams is pretty clear. And the travel issues and sporting challenge for away teams are significantly exacerbated beyond those already seen in the EPCR tournaments. So while the prospect of those match ups may whet our rugby appetites, I’m very much still to be convinced the reality will live up to expectations…
4 Go to comments