'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.
Continue reading below…
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.
Getty Images
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.
(Getty Images)
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
“We need eight or nine new players, who are hard-wearing and durable and experienced Premiership performers”. So why are they scouting a retired fullback who himself admits that his “body is broken”?
1 Go to commentsBrumbies hand, knocked a Crusaders hand. Therefore, knock on in goal. Crusaders, goal line drop out should’ve been awarded. most likely after that 24 each at full time, so extra time would’ve been the right an entertaining outcome. Act Jim
1 Go to commentsSpeell cehck
1 Go to commentsColeman is gaawwwwnnn.
1 Go to commentsnext SA head coach?
3 Go to commentsGreat try by van Poortvliet.
1 Go to commentsThey have been cruelled by injuries but almost nobody (Sevu Reece and Fletcher Newell big exceptions) has played above himself which regularly happened before. Surely Scott Robertson had maintained the recruitment programme and it looks like a reasonable squad. Last in this competition will stall a lot of careers. Penny seems likeable. But it’s not enough even though this was better. We haven’t been good enough and it’s not helped by the “it’s been 15 years since… “etc “after nearly every match. Seems somehow a soft gifting of something once valuable. Kieran Read giving comments last week almost choked describing the easy surrender of possession by the forwards. I’d love to think that the senior players some of whom are back can show enough pride in the jersey to test the Blues next week.
3 Go to commentsWho will Joe select for the back three with so many in form candidates? Just hope he doesn’t get shafted like Dave Rennie and to a lesser extent Deans.
6 Go to commentsAlways reluctant to blame a coach when losses rack up, but Penney must go. The backline is dysfunctional and the coach must carry the can. No cohesion, no idea and in many cases, minimal skill. The trains out of Roma St depart faster than the ball from Crusaders’ set pieces. Wouldn’t be surprised if the forwards went on strike.
3 Go to commentsAdding to earlier comment. Cullen Grace has been playing great at no6. Lio-Willie , who was on fire a few weeks ago, had a bad game. I think Cullen should have been moved to 8 earlier, Dominic Gardiner on earlier. Feel for Quinten Strange , put in a big shift .
6 Go to commentsWe dominated the scrums Ben Curry was all over pitch again .Surely James Harper got to be one of best English tightheads
1 Go to commentsRoos is a better option at 6 than 8 for the boks. Needs to work on his windgat though.
1 Go to commentsThe Sharks’ 2nd team maybe?
1 Go to comments‘radical’
1 Go to commentsCome back to Christchurch Robbie, please!
1 Go to commentsI think there is zero chance Sam Cane will be selected for another Test. There is simply no point except sentimentality. Razor is not sentimental- ask Wyatt Crocket. Razor is a ruthless selector
5 Go to comments> It would be best described as an elegant solution to what was potentially going to be a significant problem for new All Blacks coach Scott Robertson. It is a problem the mad population of New Zealand will have to cope with more and more as All Blacks are able to continue their careers in NZ post RWCs. It will not be a problem for coaches, who are always going to start a campaign with the captain for the next WC in mind. > Cane, despite his warrior spirit, his undoubted commitment to every team he played for and unforgettable heroics against Ireland in last year’s World Cup quarter-final, was never unanimously admired or respected within New Zealand while he was in the role. Neither was McCaw, he was considered far too passive a captain and then out of form until his last world cup where everyone opinions changed, just like they would have if Cane had won the WC. > It was never easy to see where Cane, or even if, he would fit into Robertson’s squad given the new coach will want to be building a new-look team with 2027 in mind. > Cane will win his selections on merit and come the end of the year, he’ll sign off, he hopes, with 100 caps and maybe even, at last, universal public appreciation for what was a special career. No, he won’t. Those returning from Japan have already earned the right to retain their jersey, it’s in their contract. Cane would have been playing against England if he was ready, and found it very hard to keep his place. Perform, and they keep it however. Very easy to see where Cane could have fit, very hard to see how he could have accomplished it choosing this year as his sabbatical instead of 2025, and that’s how it played out (though I assume we now know what when NZR said they were allowing him to move his sabbatical forward and return to NZ next year, they had actually agreed to simply select him for the All Blacks from overseas, without any chance he was going to play in NZ again). With a mammoth season of 15 All Black games they might as well get some value out of his years contract, though even with him being of equal character to Richie, I don’t think they should guarantee him his 100 caps. That’s not what the All Blacks should be about. He absolutely has to play winning football.
5 Go to commentswhat’s happening to Ian Peel?
1 Go to commentsAs a Crusaders fan , so disappointed , again.But I think Fergus Burke was all class for the Crusaders in his first game since October last year. Fletcher Newell , was so good at prop. Johnny McNicoll has been gold since returning from Wales. Noah Hotham brilliant , in a coming of age second season for the Crusaders.Jone Rova did really well at centre. The end of the game was tough.Sevu Reece , what a game/season in tough times.
6 Go to commentsFellas a balloon
3 Go to comments