Exeter and Saracens to scrap it out
“It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.”
Blair Kinghorn is keeping Don Corleone’s mantra in mind ahead of Edinburgh’s Challenge Cup quarter-final against Bordeaux Begles.
In the wake of Edinburgh folding in the final 20 minutes of last week’s PRO14 semifinal at home to against Ulster, the full-back came in for some stern criticism from no-nonsense coach Richard Cockerill – who’d make a great Mafia godfather – during a lengthy review meeting.
“It was tough, you know what ‘Cockers’ is like,” said Kinghorn.
“There were some hard and honest conversations. He said before the meeting it wasn’t going to be easy – and he was right.
“But it’s not personal. He wants us to improve and be the best we can be.
“If you take it personally and you sulk, that’s when you’re not going to improve.
“Sometimes the way the point comes across is brutal, and is very to the point. But he’s doing it to improve us.
“I got it quite tight because I’m a senior player now, I’ve got 90 games for Edinburgh, and I need to be delivering certain things.
“He expects high quality from me all the time, and if I don’t perform like that, he’s going to tell me.
“It sits with you for a bit. But now I’m just raring to get back into training and make the wrongs right.
“Yeah, it does hurt. We don’t want to bring things on ourselves, and I think we did against Ulster.
“It was our mistakes that let them back into the game.
“It’s not nice when you hear criticism, but it’s especially not nice when you know the criticism is true. And against Ulster, we did choke.”
Kinghorn came out of that meeting to some good news
Rob Baxter
– he was one of six Edinburgh players voted into this season’s PRO14 dream team, with team-mate, Duhan van der Merwe, and Cockerill named Player and Coach of the Year respectively.
And he added: “Because of how successful our season has been so far, we have another chance at knock-out rugby straight away.
“Everyone is raring to get back out there to show we can perform on the big stage.
“The last three or four years in the big games, we’ve not done ourselves justice, so we want to prove we can perform on these big stages.
Exeter boss Rob Baxter admits animosity exists between the Chiefs and Saracens as the pair prepare to go head-to-head again at Allianz Park.
The two clubs have been England’s dominant teams in recent seasons, meeting each other in three of the last four Gallagher Premiership finals.
There is no chance of that happening this year with Saracens relegated following persistent salary cap breaches.
But Exeter have been outspoken in their criticism of Saracens’ salary misdemeanours and that is bound to raise the temperature in north London
“Going away to France is always a tough challenge.
“French teams thrive at home, and Bordeaux have the highest average attendance in the Top 14. So going there in the pool stages was tough.”
Covid-19 means the usually-deafening Bordeaux crowd will be limited, or possibly absent, and Kinghorn nods: “It probably is an advantage for us. When you’re playing with a full home crowd behind you, it does make a difference.
“When we went over there in the pool stages, the fans were so loud, you couldn’t hear anyone else on the pitch. today despite the large gap between them in the table.
“There’s obviously animosity, largely because myself or Tony Rowe (chairman and chief executive) have been happy to make media comments about what we felt about the salary cap,” Chiefs director of rugby Baxter said.
“But they wouldn’t have been different to comments made by any other club, it’s just that our comments carried more weight because we’ve played in finals against them.
“There hasn’t been any love lost between us for seasons. We’ve both been operating at the
“I’m going into it confident. We’ve got the ability to turn them over. I fully believe in us.
“I think the game against Ulster will be the final turning point, and that everything will click.
“If you were at the review, you would be like: ‘Right, we don’t want to be here again. We don’t want to be in this moment again where we’re getting shouted at, and we’re hawking the same things that we’ve been through for the last four years’.
“Everyone’s sick and tired of it. We’ve got to the point where I just feel like we’ve turned a corner.” top end of the Premiership for the last three or four years and the reality is that when you meet in the semi-finals or finals, you battle away in those games.”
With Exeter’s place in the end-of-season play-offs already confirmed, the main focus is on the battle for a top four spot behind.
Second-placed Sale, for whom England centre Manu Tuilagi makes his 100th Premiership appearance, host Bath, who are four points adrift of them in fifth.
Third meets fourth as Bristol travel to Wasps with just two points separating the sides.