Edinburgh prepare for Kings after heavy defeat
EDINBURGH will dust themselves off after a 17-0 defeat by Glasgow ahead of their PRO14 match against the Southern Kings tomorrow, coach Richard Cockerill said.
The Kings, still without a win after 10 games, flew to Scotland on Tuesday for what promises to be one of their toughest games of the season.
After beating Glasgow in the opening leg of the 1872 Challenge, Edinburgh failed to get a point on the board in the return game at Scotstoun.
“I’m proud of the performance and the fact we were in the battle the whole way. We’ll dust ourselves off, and return to training and prepare for the Southern Kings,” Cockerill said.
The Kings arrived in Edinburgh yesterday and will have their captain’s run today.
The Edinburgh coach said he had seen even more evidence in the second game against Glasgow than when his 14-man side had beaten their neighbours at Murrayfield the previous week, that they are closing the gap.
“The 1872 Challenge is important to some, but the league points are more important to me,” he said. “It wasn’t an easy game for them. Glasgow battled to get their game going and we created as many opportunities as them and if you’d come into these games a fortnight ago you wouldn’t have expected that to be the case.
“So, we’re developing. They are a better team than us, at the moment. We’re only halfway to where we can be and want to be.”
The final margin by no means reflected the nature of a match that was fiercely contested, albeit lacking in real quality, punctuated too frequently by errors and ill-discipline.
“I’m disappointed with the final score and a bit disappointed in the fact that we created lots of opportunities, which is a real positive for us in our attacking game, and then we threw the ball away. That was frustrating,” Cockerill observed.
“In the end, we didn’t deserve to win. They played well, they put us under pressure at the right times.
“They won the small margins because we didn’t hold on to the ball when we created opportunities.
“We gave away twice as many penalties, but . . . I felt the breakdown was refereed differently and they were allowed to do a lot more than we were and that’s frustrating,” he said pointedly.
What particularly pleased Cockerill was the willingness Edinburgh showed to play with ambition against a team with a superior reputation in that regard.
“We’re starting to be a tough team to beat, with the ball and without it, and we’re gaining some respect and some credibility.
“No excuses, they were better than us, but a lot of sides have come here and been overrun and at no point did we look like we were going to be overrun,” he said.
The Kings are expected to name their team today.