Richard Cockerill conceded that the right team had won after Cardiff Blues put his side out of the European Challenge Cup last night, but he believes his Edinburgh side will be stronger as they re-set their sights on earning a place in the Pro14 play-offs.
The home team’s head coach had just watched his side suffer their first defeat of the season at BT Murrayfield, contributing hugely to their own downfall, but he hopes they will learn quickly from the experience ahead of an opportunity to knock next weekend’s opponents Ulster out of the Pro14 play-off race.
“It’s frustrating and disappointing but we’ve got three league games left and hopefully a play-off – I’d like it to be a play-off in the (PRO14) play-offs rather than a play-off for Europe,” he said.
“We’ve got to regroup and show some mettle as a group of people, myself included. We’ve tripped over tonight and it’s disappointing but we have to get our game back on track for Friday when Ulster arrive.”
For all that he was disappointed with their overall performance he felt luck had not favoured his men as, in testing conditions on a cold, wet night both Blues tries came as a result of ricochets off Edinburgh players that landed in opposition hands.
“One hits the back of one of our players and they score and the other one we dive and we miss it and they pick it up and score from the next phase,” he observed.
Cockerill also reckoned Edinburgh might have played a large chunk of the closing stages with a two man advantage when the Blues had one man in the sin bin and another should perhaps have followed.
“With ten minutes to go and if we score from those series of scrums, after a great line-break, are five metres from the line and they kill the ball… we really should have got something from that, but that’s our fault as we didn’t execute,” he said.
“Three scrum penalties and you’d like to think the ref might have gone under the sticks [for penalty try], they lose a prop and are left to play with 13, but that’s life. He refereed pretty well and we need to be better than that.”
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