Cockerill eyes winning start
New Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill is hoping his side start well when they travel to face the Cardiff Blues on Friday evening.
Cockerill etched his name into Leicester folklore by leading them to back-to-back Premiership titles in 2008 and 2009 in a 12-year stint.
The PRO14 opener between the capital sides of Scotland and Wales on Friday will be Cockerill's first professional game in charge at Edinburgh.
And Cockerill is looking forward to his first experience of Cardiff Arms Park and can't wait to get the season underway.
“I’m optimistic. The boys have had a good pre-season, but I’m sure everyone is saying the same in that regard," Cockerill told the Scotsman.
“We’ve had a couple of good weeks, we just need to make sure we go and we put our best game out on the field.
“Cardiff are a dangerous side, both from their drive in the forward pack and the fact they like to play an unstructured game.
“They’ve got players that can punish you if you’re inaccurate.
"We’ve prepared well, but we just don’t know what to expect until we get into the live scenario.
"We’re going there to win, that’s our mentality and so it should be. We’re looking forward to it.
“It’s my first experience [of Cardiff Arms Park].
"There’s a synthetic field, which will make the game quick, and we’ve not won there for the last four years so it’s going to be a challenge for us.
“The playing group are in a good place, but we need to make sure that we go there and do the job.
"We’ve got to have a tough mind-set and physically we’ve got to be very good.
"It’s important that we get off to a good start and bring some points back.
“We’ve got internationals that are coming back in and available and we’ve got guys that have done 11 or 12 weeks of pre-season.
“We’ve picked a team which we feel is the right squad, because of the dynamics of bringing international guys back in – some will feature, some won’t.
"It’s a long season so in the here and now we’ve picked what I think is the best side to go to Cardiff and win.”