Coach Cockerill left frustrated by trialling of law variations
Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill had no complaints about Friday night’s 1872 Cup defeat to Glasgow Warriors – but he didn’t hide his frustration with how the law variations currently being trialled in the Rainbow Cup have disrupted the game.
Two players were sent-off through the newly-introduced “captain’s challenges” rule, which allows the captain of each team to refer suspected foul play by the opposition to the Television Match Official ( TMO).
There was also a hold-up when Edinburgh challenged Glasgow Warriors’ third try on the stroke of half-time, before the score was eventually awarded.
Add in two lengthy hold-ups after Scott Cummings of Glasgow and Grant Gilchrist of Edinburgh suffered head injuries on the pitch, and a game which was supposed to last 80 minutes didn’t finish until two hours and 10 minutes after kick-off.
“Obviously there were a couple of injuries that elongated it but challenging the referee’s calls
and all that … for me, the officials should be seeing those things anyway,” said Cockerill.
“It made for a long evening. “Certainly, the Oli Kebble redcard is a pretty obvious one and the TMO is there to look at foul play. I didn’t see the Mark Bennett one in real time, but I’d say it’s a fair enough call. You’d like to think the officials – and certainly the television officials – can see those things happen.
“Did it make the game better? Not really.
“I don’t know who brought these changes in. We’ll trial them and they’ll decide if they stay.
“Will we be consulted? I’ve no idea.
“But, for me, there’s enough meddling with the laws of the game – we just need to have some consistency and get the game flowing as well as we can.
“We’re disappointed because we always want to win,” he added.
“I thought we gave some soft points away in the first half which came back to hurt us a little bit, but happy with the effort and mentality to stay in the game.
“If we had scored with five or six minutes to go then maybe we could have come back from a grandstand finish, but it wasn’t to be.”
For opposite number, Danny Wilson (inset), there was clear relief with the way his team had bounced back after a disastrous performance when losing to Benetton Treviso last time out.
“We haven’t won the 1872 Cup for four years, but we won it this year so that’s an achievement, and we’ve hopefully qualified for Europe so that’s an achievement,” he said.
“In a difficult year when there has been a lot of tough days, I think it’s important that we draw on the positives as well and
Friday was a positive.”
His one frustration was the team’s high penalty count, which has been a problem throughout the season.
“The edge of that physical battle is the important bit, and we probably went over that edge too many times in terms of overeagerness that led to penalties,” he concluded.
“We’ve got to find the line between that type of passion and hunger, whilst having far, far better discipline, because it’s an ongoing problem that we have to keep addressing.”