Edinburgh Rugby go top but coach Richard Cockerill knows nothing is won yet

'There are no medals awarded after just ten rounds'

Richard Cockerill takes his team to face Top 14 leaders Bordeaux-Begles this week

Edinburgh start the new year sitting pretty at the top of the Guinness Pro14’s Conference B but coach Richard Cockerill is taking nothing for granted and demands continued work and effort.

The capital pro-team thrashed Southern Kings 61-13 at BT Murrayfield on Saturday night in a bizarre match which saw the South Africans down to 12 men towards the end after an early red card, injury woes and then a sin-binning. Edinburgh showed no mercy and racked up nine tries to move three points clear at the top of their conference after Munster’s loss at Ulster the previous evening.

“I’m not interested in that at all,” said Cockerill. “We just want to keep collecting points.

“We’re top after ten games and where we sit after 21 games is what matters. There are no medals after ten rounds.

“We’ve just got to keep chipping away, making sure our environment is strong, keeping honest and working hard every week, so that we keep getting performance out of the team, which at this point we are doing okay with.”

The eccentricities of the rugby season mean that, with European games and Six Nations ahead, there are no more Pro14 fixtures for Edinburgh until their trip to Scarlets on 15 February.

The attention now switches to their Challenge Cup showdown on Saturday at French form side Bordeaux-Begles, who lead the Top 14 and are a point ahead of Edinburgh in Pool 3 of that competition.

“We’ve got two big games in Europe [with Agen at home to finish on 18 January]. We want to qualify and play in quarter-finals and now it is just down to me to manage the squad over the next couple of weeks.

“You can take your best team to Bordeaux and they’ve been on fire – they are on top of the French league which is a very tough place to play rugby. They look well coached, have a deep squad who look very powerful.

“So, I’ve just got to weight up the next combinations to play next week and the week after against Agen. What do we need to qualify? And making sure that we are looking after our Test guys and giving other guys opportunities.”

Cockerill’s rebuilding of Edinburgh is evident. There was, inevitably, a big drop off in attendance from the record 27,437 crowd at the previous Saturday’s 29-19 win over Glasgow as less than 5,000 attended this rout of Conference B’s bottom side. But with work starting on the national stadium’s back pitches for a new “Mini-Murrayfield” home and the team placed well in both their competitions it is an encouraging story heading into the new decade.

Cockerill remains realistic, though. “Our squad isn’t huge so we’ve got to make sure that we pick our fights sensibly, it’s as simple as that,” he said.

“I want to get to the end part of the season with some gas left in the tank, and there has been a World Cup, there is going to be a Six Nations when guys are going to be away, so I’ve got a bit of thinking to do around selection for next week.”

Edinburgh centre Matt Scott has a law degree and is an articulate man but even he was left scratching his head a bit after an interesting, entertaining but, at times bewildering 80 minute.

Normally, a win that takes you to the top of the table to kick the year off would be a moment for euphoria but the way this match unfolded left it with an asterisk attached.

The Kings were spirited and plugged away despite being hit by a barrage of blows, the first of which was a 12th-minute red card to tighthead prop Pieter Scholtz, rightly shown by female Irish referee Joy Neville for a forearm smash on John Barclay. An injury to replacement prop De-Jay Terblanche when all subs had been used and then a yellow card for lock Aston Fortuin saw the Kings down to almost a football team and clinical Edinburgh took advantage.

“It was a scrappy game,” said inside centre Scott, who ran in the third of nine Edinburgh tries during a first half which was a much more even contest than the second. “Obviously the contest was over when they got that red card and then had to got down to 13 and then ultimately 12 – so it’s kind of hard to analyse it.”

For Scott, the 29-year-old whose last of 39 Scotland caps came in June 2017, it was another step forward in his bid to relaunch a stalled Test career as the Six Nations approaches following an impressive appearance off the bench following a rib injury in the previous Saturday’s 29-19 win over Glasgow.

“It was good for me to get 80 minutes under the belt,” he said. “I only got about 20 to 25 minutes last week. I’m just coming back to full match fitness really, so happy to get through it.

“The whole challenge this week was the mental side of it,” said Scott. “You need no more motivation than a big crowd and going against your closest rivals, to have that high.

“That’s always a challenge in sport – to play a team that’s bottom of your conference, albeit a really good side. You certainly saw that at the start of the game, we were slow and we were reactive rather than proactive.”