Brew up a storm!
Cockerill tells his team they must nullify home fan frenzy before they can overcome Toulon
EDINBURGH head coach Richard Cockerill has warned his team they will have to go ‘full metal jacket’ to cope with the daunting atmosphere at Toulon’s Stade Mayol this weekend.
The Englishman was assistant head coach to Mike Ford at the French giants for part of the 2016-2017 season, eventually taking charge towards the end of that campaign before joining Edinburgh.
So he knows from personal experience how some visiting teams can crumble before the game even starts there.
A bonus point for Cockerill’s team in this Saturday’s Champions Cup clash will put them in the driving seat to secure a place in the quarter-finals.
And although Toulon are out of the running for the knock-out stages, he suspects they will still field a full-strength side — and he has told his players that the home fans will provide one of the most raucous environments they have encountered.
‘This is a massive match for us and the minute we get near to the ground we have to give it the full metal jacket approach,’ said Cockerill.
‘I don’t want us to go to Toulon and be half-assed simply because we’ll have another shot at qualifying against Montpellier in our final European game at home. We want to win this one in France and qualify this weekend.
‘If the gods are looking down on us and we qualify, and Glasgow go through, too, we could get them at home in a European quarter-final. How good would that be?’
Before he can begin to dream of a Scottish derby in the last eight, Cockerill has to get his Edinburgh players over this weekend’s French hurdle.
Toulon’s supporters gather outside the stadium on match day to cheer in their team and give them a guard of honour.
Once inside, a heavily-tattooed local leads them in a war chant called Pilou-Pilou which is their equivalent of the New Zealand Haka and is designed to intimidate the opposition.
Cockerill describes events on a Toulon game day as a real ‘cavalcade’ but knows only too well that their adoring fans can just as quickly turn on their team if things aren’t going their way.
‘The Pilou-Pilou chant they do and all that stuff, it’s historically important for them and it’s a great show,’ he said.
‘The players come in by bus and walk through the crowd. The band’s playing and when you’re in that Toulon team it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and makes you want to play hard.
‘They’ve got a city that really cares about their club and there’ll be an 18,000-capacity crowd against us that will be very partisan. I was Toulon assistant coach when they lost to La Rochelle at home and the fans’ reaction to that was bad, although not half as bad as the owners’ reaction, right enough!
‘Their players won’t want to lose at the Stade Mayol, that’s for sure. But they can make all the noise they like and do what they like, it doesn’t make any difference to us provided we just get on with our jobs and are focused.’
Cockerill reckons that Toulon, who were beaten 40-14 by his team at Murrayfield in October, will still field their strongest side this Saturday.
They may well have something to prove against an Edinburgh side who are on something of a high right now after they followed up their back-to-back Pro14 victories over Glasgow Warriors with last weekend’s 38-0 demolition of Southern Kings.
‘They will go flat out for the reasons I mentioned,’ said Cockerill. ‘When they are playing at home, the fans will expect a win and to be entertained.
‘Toulon play the way their fans want, and being out of the reckoning (for qualification) won’t come into it for them. I expect them to field their strongest side available.
‘The crowd will expect them to run the ball, offload and play nice rugby and win. When you have the likes of Rhys Webb, Francois Trinh-Duc, Julian Savea, JP Pietersen and Josua Tuisova in your squad, that is a natural way to play.
‘But pressure also comes on them because of that.
‘When you’re going up against the big names we’re going to be facing this weekend, away from home, psychologically it is tough because that’s a world-class playing roster that cost an awful lot of money to put together.
‘We’ve got to get past the star names in the Toulon squad and look at how they play and what they do, then look at how we play and realise that we can win.’