Richard Cockerill hails Edinburgh’s second-half showing

David Skippers

Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill praised his team’s second-half showing in their 30-15 1872 Cup win over Glasgow Warriors at Murrayfield on Saturday.

Cockerill’s side trailed 15-13 at the break in the first game of rugby in Scotland since the lockdown, but they scored 17 points without reply in the second period to seal a PRO14 semi-final place.

Scrum-half Nic Groom bagged his second try following brilliant wing play from Duhan van der Merwe and his replacement, Charlie Shiel, scored an impressive solo effort.

But it was doing the basics well that pleased Cockerill.

“It’s a really good win,” he said, after his side consolidated top spot in Conference B and retained the 1872 Cup.

“We can play a lot better, I’m sure Glasgow will feel the same. But very happy to be in the semi-finals.

“Both sides want to play, we played more than I would have liked us to at times.

“There was no panic at half-time, we let them into our half too easily on two occasions and they scored.

“It was messy (at the start), we didn’t control the game as well as I would have liked, we got into a bit of ‘let’s play like them’ at times and threw it side to side and got ourselves stuck in our own half.

“We went back to basics, let’s do the basics really well, we don’t need the fancy stuff, throwing balls and chucking offloads.

“We scored some really nice tries in the second half but we will create them without putting ourselves under pressure.”

After a scrappy start, Glasgow led at the break thanks to tries from Pete Horne and Adam Hastings but the latter missed a couple of chances to kick Warriors further ahead and they failed to respond after Groom put Edinburgh ahead on the hour mark.

Head coach Danny Wilson said after his first game in charge: “We failed to build any pressure in phases, Edinburgh’s defensive breakdown was pretty accurate and our attacking breakdown we got on the wrong side of the referee and gave a few penalties away that stalled our momentum.

“And then two soft tries that we shouldn’t be conceding, resulting from not getting out our own third. There was a turnover there and a kick that stays on the field when we are up against it, and it leaves us in a very difficult defensive position.

“That led to two soft tries and that’s the difference on the scoreboard.”

 

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