With his vast understanding of European and global rugby Richard Cockerill has brought refreshing straightforwardness to Murrayfield since his arrival last year and that extends to an honest analysis of his team’s capabilities both in the short and long-term.
That, he knows, opens him up to naïve interpretation of his admission, last month, that Edinburgh will not win this season’s European Champions Cup in a part of the world where it was previously argued that it would have lacked ambition to do other than identify winning the 2015 World Cup as a realistic strategic target.
The former England hooker and Leicester Tigers and Toulon head coach has the credibility of having long competed at the top end of the sport when expressing his views, however and he knows that in spite of generally having been recognised as over-achieving during his first season in charge, he has to extract a great deal more than he has previously from his relatively low-budget squad if they are to take anything from their meetings with mighty Montpellier and his former clubmates at Toulon.
“If we’re to win the next two weeks we have to play better than we’ve done the last 15 months,” he said bluntly.“We’re not playing a semi-motivated Stade Francais or London Irish (last season’s European Challenge Cup pool rivals). These are two big teams in the next two weeks who’d like to think they can win the competition. It’s like playing a Leinster or Saracens. It’s a huge test and we’ll see where we get to. It’s a win-win for us as a team. If we go in and surprise people then I’ll be surprised myself and if we lose I suppose we’re supposed to. I just hope we play our best game, we physically turn up and we enjoy the experience which isn’t getting smashed on the scoreboard.”
To read that as an admission of defeat would, however, be to misrepresent Cockerill who knows that there is a difference between persuading players and teams that they can win each individual match they contest, while recognising the limitations that comparative budgets impose in terms of building campaigns.
In those terms, to get out of their pool would be an extraordinary achievement on this first appearance in the European Champions Cup.
“It’s going to be a big ask isn’t it? You’ve got to win all your home games and do something away from home,” he said.
“We’ve got to do our best to go to Montpellier and play as well as we can and try to win. We’ve got Toulon next who aren’t having the best of seasons by their standards. I wouldn’t say it’s a dead cert we’ll get out of the group but we’ve got to pick our best team, that’s fit and play how we want to play and see where we get to.”
That will mean playing to their own strengths and - in a pool which also features English Premiership side Newcastle Falcons - not allowing the more powerful French sides in particular to dictate the pacer and style of play.
“We’re not going to force them into an arm wrestle because that’s going to make it tough for us. Our ball in play in our comp is over 40 minutes, theirs is just over 30 minutes, so if we can keep lots of ball, get quick ball and put them under pressure we’ll create opportunities,” Cockerill pointed out.
“Let them control the ball, give it away cheaply, kick the ball down the throats of the big men in wide channels we’ll get punished.”
Brutal as the overall challenge may be, Edinburgh have been done a small favour in terms of scheduling, opening against the pool favourites away from home, allowing them to properly grasp what is required against the French team without any weight of expectation.
"It will be a good test for us," said Cockerill.
"If we come away with anything at the weekend it’ll be a bonus for us. It’s Europe, it’s going to be that tight, you’ve got to win your home games and if you can get anything away from home whatever that looks like, you take it. So even if we get beaten at the weekend we’ll still be battling for our points and see where we get to in the pool stages. For us it’s going to be a great learning process for us, isn’t it. On Saturday when we finish we’ll have played against one of the biggest teams in Europe and we’ll see where we benchmark.”
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