Cockerill won’t toast success against weakened Mu nster
EDINBURGH coach Richard Cockerill called for a more clinical edge from his players going forward after Friday night’s 18-16 win over a weakened Munster side closed the gap at the top of Conference B to two points.
Tries in each half from Matt Scott and Eroni Sau gave Edinburgh the win at Musgrave Park but Cockerill’s side struggled badly as their 10-0 lead was transformed into a 16-10 deficit before the hour mark.
They deserved the win in the end but Cockerill was not inclined to celebrate victory over the side that ended their Champions Cup hopes in last year’s quarter-final.
‘Munster is a great club with great people,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a huge amount of respect for them.
‘But plenty of times when I was at Leicester, you’d put out a second team and an opponent comes and turns you over and they run round like they’ve won the World Cup — and you go: “Really, are those your aspirations?”
‘Well, our aspirations are bigger than — with respect — beating Munster’s second team. We need to be better.’
‘They are a great club and one day if we work really hard, we’d love to be as good as this club is.’
While Munster appeared to boss the scrum at Musgrave Park, Edinburgh will be happy with their defensive effort, particularly how their defensive maul held up in the face of one of the best set-piece teams in the Pro14.
Munster’s only try came after incessant pressure on the Edinburgh try-line for 23 phases and, by and large, Cockerill’s side looked comfortable.
‘There are parts of our game that were really good,’ he noted. ‘Munster are no mugs. They’re well coached. They have a good squad.
‘This is a great win for us. It’s a great four points but circumstances were in our favour. Still, we’ll take it.
‘However, we need to be better. Parts of our game just weren’t good enough with the players we had on the field.
‘But we started really well and did some good things. We finished strongly. We controlled that last 10 minutes and we squeezed the life out of them to keep the result.
‘So some really good parts but you are never as good as you think you are.’
Last week, Edinburgh coughed up a lead to end up drawing with Bordeaux in the Challenge Cup.
After this victory in the Pro14, they head into the first of their back-to-back games with Wasps at BT Murrayfield on Friday.
They might be without the services of try-scorer Scott, who sustained a rib injury against Munster. Other than his knock, Edinburgh appear to have emerged unscathed.
‘He popped his rib cartilage — if you’re a prop, you get on with it but if you’re a centre, it’s a couple of weeks out, isn’t it? joked Cockerill.