A month after taking over as the new head coach at Edinburgh Rugby, Richard Cockerill met the press for the first time yesterday afternoon and wasted no time in living up to his reputation as a no-nonsense, 
straight-talking bull-dog. 

He has inherited a side low on confidence, having not managed to finish better than eighth in the league since 2010, but doesn’t believe that massaging egos is the way to turn the capital outfit’s fortunes around.

The former Leicester Tigers and Toulon head coach believes the team are better than their recent record suggests, but insists that his new players must take ownership of their own failings before they can hope to move onwards and upwards.

“During these first few weeks I have had to find out where these guys are. We have 11 internationalists and when you have that you shouldn’t be sitting in the bottom four,” said the former England hooker.

“I think there is a good core of players so I need to create an environment where they are hard-working and will put their bodies on the line every week to get better. They can’t be just waiting for the next Test match to come along.”

“We were at a camp in St Andrews last week with the players and we had some good conversations about where they think they are, where they would like to be, and how they would like people to describe them as a team. That’s the starting point to me – being realistic about where we are, because otherwise we are just in denial.”

“People say we should be a top-six team but the reality is we’ve never finished above eighth [since 2010] so why the hell should we be sixth.”

“But there is a lot of good things about the team with young players like Magnus Bradbury, Jamie Ritchie, Blair Kinghorn and Darcy Graham coming thorough, and even the senior players like Ben Toolis and Grant Gilchrist aren’t old. 

“I’m not saying I have all the answers but I know what a team looks like that works hard and wins. Hopefully we can give the team an environment where they want to play together, have an identity, have a culture, which means working hard today and getting it right today.”

“We’re going to play ball in hand. We’ve got some good players who want to play and I want to encourage that. But I want us to play to win – I want us to be tough to play against, not just defensively but being unpredictable with ball in hand, so that supporters walk away saying: ‘Well, okay, we might have lost by five – but didn’t our boys put a shift in.’

“I need players who want to improve and be as good as they can be. Not just a bit better than what Scotland has got, but as good as they can be – I want to have world-class players. There is clearly enough talent within this squad to kick on and be better than they are."

Cockerill is going to have to work with almost exactly the same squad which stumbled through last season to ninth place.

The only two coming in with genuine professional pedigree are Robbie Fruean and Mark Bennett, the latter arriving from Glasgow Warriors and almost immediately injuring a knee which, after reconstructive surgery, will keep him out at least until the end of the year.