HUMBLED KIDS ARE DEFENDED BY COCKERILL
By Barry Murphy
IT WILL be a relief to Edinburgh supporters to see the reinforcements back this week, but there was little comfort from the 44-14 trimming they suffered at the hands of Munster on Friday night.
Richard Cockerill made nine changes to his side after their loss to the Dragons, and without his international players his side were outclassed and fell to a seventh away defeat from seven games this season.
Next Friday, Murrayfield will see the return of Champions Cup rugby with Pool Five leaders Newcastle making the short trip north, and a positive result there will put the Scottish side on top of the pile.
But without so many leaders Edinburgh were hammered at Musgrave Park. Munster ran in eight of the 10 tries scored on the night, with Duhan van der Merwe twice on the mark for Cockerill’s men.
Irish internationals Keith Earls (3), Andrew Conway (2) and Chris Farrell (2) shared seven tries between them, and in the face of such dominance Cockerill saw no use in censuring his young players.
‘You look at the two team sheets and it’s hard to be shouting at blokes in that situation (losing heavily),’ said Cockerill.
‘The reality is that we were outclassed a little bit, physically we struggled to cope, our back five in the scrum is young and very inexperienced — apart from Luke Hamilton — so when you look at what we were playing you think it’s going to be tough and it turned out to be tough. There’s no shame in losing here.
‘We will live to fight another day. Look, nine of our forwards have been playing Test matches the last four weeks, the majority played last week and there are some rest regulations around that. We just haven’t got a deep enough squad to have nine internationals missing and then we’ve got three or four injured as well. That’s nobody’s fault, that’s just the way it is.’
Restoring the likes of Billy Mata, Ben Toolis and Pierre Schoeman to the team will do a lot to help the pack next week.
‘We’re in with a fighting chance — with our best side out, or as near as damn it, we’re a tough team to beat as we know,’ said Cockerill. ‘So we need to beat Newcastle this week at home.’