Cockerill Leaves Edinburgh

[Redman7]

Richard Cockerill leaves Edinburgh to 'pursue other opportunities' https://the42.ie/5499529

Big loss for Edinburgh and very late to begin looking for a head coach, hopefully they saw it coming and are already in the process

 

[Not Mike Brown's Sock]

Clermont I assume?

 

[MikeTheNative]

I think Edinburgh will probably be poorer as a result. For his perspective I can see why he would try to seek a a new challenge. With their and Scotland's limited budget/playing pool he's probably taken them as far as he can.

 

[g6mcg]

John Barclay has said Cockerill's methods were good for an initial shake up but quickly ****** the squad off. Still reckon someone else has come in for him as SRU unlikely to have the money to pay him off

 

[g6mcg]

Mike Blair's unbeaten summer with Scotland has got him the job. Seems to be highly rated within the SRU so makes sense although I'd rather have an experienced head. Bit of a Catch 22 with only the two teams though.

 

[odw26]

I think it's a good signing and am looking forward to next year hopefully our attack will improve and our young 9/10s will be given a little more freedom to play plus others have suggested that he's being groomed for the top job so our style of play may be more akin to Scotland's in the coming years which will be fun to watch if true

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

At least it's not Hodge.

I remain skeptical on how good Edinburgh squad is.
Got some great Scotland internationals but they won't be playing more than 10 pro 14 games a season.

Still find it hard to believe that cockers got the boot after one poor season where none of the big internationals played more than 5 games, despite finishing top of the conference the season before.

 

[odw26]

We've got a decent squad but it has got weaker over the summer as we've lost Berghan, Sutherland, and van der Merwe but we've still got one of the best back rows in Europe and we've added some decent players in Lang, de Bruin and Henry Immelman. Our Scotland players should be playing more than 10 games a season for us as the new format has either no or very little domestic games during international windows so we should have our full strength squad for most of the season unlike last season.
I think Cockerill left because of major discontent within the squad rather than on-field performance unfortunately as players weren't happy with the all-stick approach, and there were rumours of player revolts earlier in the season as well. It's a shame he's left because he turned us into a genuine competitive outfit but hopefully Mike Blair can continue that and just open up our backs to play more freely.