COCKERILL SURE HIS WEAKENED SIDE CAN PASS DRAGONS TEST

RICHARD COCKERILL has challenged his depleted Edinburgh squad to step up to the plate and deliver a first away victory of the season against the Dragons this evening.

The capital side have travelled to Wales without a string of several key players due to injury problems and Scotland call-ups.

But Cockerill remains confident that his men will take care of business against a team who sit bottom of Conference B in the Guinness Pro14.

‘There’s a lot of noise that it’s a really important game for the Dragons but it’s a really important game for us, too,’ said the Edinburgh head coach. ‘If we can get a positive result, it would put us right in the mix for the play-offs.

‘I expect us to perform well and I expect us to win. We’ve got a good group of guys, who showed against a vastly experienced Scarlets team that we can stand up and play.

‘We need to keep up those levels of intensity and physicality this weekend.’

Despite being down to the bare bones in certain positions, Cockerill welcomes back Ben Toolis and Darcy Graham after they were released from the Scotland squad prior to yesterday’s game against Argentina.

But the rest of the contingent who have been away on duty with the national team, including Stuart McInally, WP Nel, Allan Dell, Jamie Ritchie, Hamish Watson, Blair Kinghorn and Grant Gilchrist, are almost certain to be rested for the trip to Munster this coming Friday.

‘I’m unlikely to pick anybody that’s been on Test duty next week at Munster because we’ve then got back-to-back Newcastle, back-to-back Glasgow. Then we have the Kings at home then we go back into Europe,’ said Cockerill.

‘With injury issues, certainly in the back five of the scrum, we’re going to be exposed a little bit next week, as well.

‘But looking at the bigger picture around Europe, home and away to Newcastle, if we can win those two games it puts us in a position where we may have an opportunity to qualify out of the group.

‘We have to manage the international players. A lot of our forward pack are international players with Scotland and, obviously, one with Fiji (Bill Mata).

‘But there’s nothing we can do about that. The bigger picture is Europe and also making sure that we win the games that we should win in the league.’