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Cockerill targets second successive away scalp

Edinburgh boss Richard Cockerill

Richard Cockerill knows his Edinburgh side face a stern examination when they take on reigning champions Leinster but believes they can follow up last weekend’s victory over Cardiff Blues with another away scalp.

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Edinburgh have opened their Guinness PRO14 campaign with two consecutive victories to sit second in the Conference B standings behind Munster.

The capital club will travel to Conference A leaders Leinster on Friday night looking to extend their winning streak, and while Cockerill knows that will be far from easy, he is taking inspiration from their 19-11 win at Cardiff Arms Park last time out.

“It’s another big challenge for us,” head coach Cockerill told the club’s official website. “They’ve got some real experience in key areas in the spine of that team.

“If you let Leinster get on the front foot and control the tempo of the game, they’re going to cause problems.

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“Whenever you go to Dublin, you’re always going to face a huge test. They have a huge amount of experience across that team and they can win games with 15 guys missing at the World Cup.

“We know that they’ll be dangerous and we know that everyone will expect them to win, but people probably thought that last week when we travelled to Cardiff. We’ll go to Leinster with optimism and we’ll go there to win.

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“I was unsure where we’d get to with Cardiff – they had a good win on the road at Kings and they’re not missing many, and there’s been a bit of chat from them asking is this the year they do a Connacht and get a good start and all that sort of stuff.

“We had to go away from home and stay in the battle and take the points home. It’s a hard place to go and play.

“I’m not a betting man, but I’m sure the odds were pretty much against us getting a result. But I’m delighted with it because it’s four points we gain and teams will find it hard to go there and win.”

Mesulame Kunavula will make his first start for the club while fellow forward Jamie Hodgson also comes into the XV following injuries to Fraser McKenzie and Lewis Carmichael.

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Australia sat down to talk to the media ahead of their final rugby World Cup group game against Georgia on Friday.

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J
JW 1 hour ago
'They smelt it': Scott Robertson says Italy sensed All Blacks' vulnerability

Even the 20/30 cappers did too I reckon.


IDK, I think Jordan has a limited life span in this side unless he can develop more to his game. Like you go on to mention, I think theyres more important things to worry about than the effectiveness of someone's extra strings, or secondary components to their game.


Bash backs are Fosters thing, and to a large part they've made it work. Theyre now one of the best teams in the world.


They boy's trucked it up a bit against Italy in the redzone, and against France, wasn't that effective without the right players probably.


Try and take a look at it this way. Dissapointed Havili and Blackadder were in the side? Havili despite clearly shown that he can't do what the team needs at 12 was kept on for the RWC. Back goes down and he brings in Blackadder who doesn't play. Refuses to drop Christie when he should and look who starts this season. Beauden Barret not playing well enough to keep his 10 jersey but we gotta keep him in the side. Weve only got one 8, we stuff developing another I'll just play Ardie every game.


This years team wasn't burdened overly with injuries but they were in every position Razor might have wanted to try and development, severely limiting options. I'm not defending Razor as there was also plenty of other opportunity to make up for it and he was a little gunshy, but I'm also not going to overly criticise him because he chose cohesion over a black slate.

How long are we going to keep blaming All Black failings on Ian Foster.

I think more and more people are on board with it being time to try alternatives, but then again, how would they have reacted to a loss against Italy? 😉

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