Richard Cockerill indicated he’s more than amenable to a new contract at Edinburgh as he would be damned “if I let someone else ride on the back of what we’ve built here”.
The Englishman is out of contract at the end of next season, but discussions are well advanced and while there’s nothing to announce yet, it doesn’t sound like it’ll be a protracted process.
“They are really positive discussions,” he said. “Obviously with Covid-19 it’s difficult to get answers from both ends.
“But they have every intention to want me to stay here, and I have every intention to stay. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will sort something to make that work and start looking at building our squad to the next World Cup and beyond.”
Cockerill doesn’t want to see anyone else take the team he’s built to the next level.
“I’ve invested a lot of time and effort, physical and emotional, into this project,” he said. “At this point, the age demographic of our squad and where we are at the moment means that if we are going to get to the end of it and see some success then I want to be here to see that.
“I’ll be damned if I’m letting someone else take over and ride on the back of what we’ve built. This club is now respected in the PRO 14, when we’ve played in Europe we’ve done very well and that’s a big credit to everyone involved.
“It’s not always about thinking about what you’re going to do next. I’ve got to get this job right first and when it’s time for me to move on that will be a natural time for that to happen, and I probably won’t decide that; someone else will.”
He did need to see where the “financials” were going in the light of the pandemic lockdown and revenue losses, but that wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker, he added.
“You just want to know what exactly it is you’re going into,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean if it’s not as rosy a picture as I would like I wouldn’t want to stay, it’s just to know what your job looks like over the next 36 months.
“Part of being a head coach and a leader of a team is knowing you can’t always have it your own way, and if things get tighter financially we have to find a way to get through that, and we will.”
In the meantime, Cockerill believes the old stereotype of Edinburgh being boring and pragmatic and Glasgow the entertainers is gone.
He is good friends with new Warriors coach and former Scotland assistant Danny Wilson – “he’s sat in on some of our meetings when he was with Scotland so there are no secrets” – but thinks his is the squad who can mould their game to whatever needs to be done as the rivals restart rugby north of the border at BT Murrayfield on Saturday.
“What we’ve created is a team that can play in any conditions, and play any type of rugby,” he said. “It allows us to play wide and fast and loose because we’ve got the players and the skillset to do it, but if it’s pouring with rain and it’s a gale outside we’ll just embrace those conditions, kick the ball go and chase it, and have the appetite to go and defend, attack their set-piece and try to dominate them physically.
“Generally if it’s windy and rainy for Glasgow they don’t like it because it ruins their game. But we can play any style of rugby in any conditions. If people say we’re boring then great because we’ve won more games than we’ve lost, and when it was really rubbish weather we actually won all our games.
“They were tight and they were horrible but the win was ours. When the weather was nice we actually played some decent rugby and outscored Glasgow in our home game with a bonus point win, which was good to see.”
Cockerill does expect a messy sort of game – “five months away from rugby, playing pre-season in competition, there’s going to errors, isn’t there?” he added, but he thinks the “jackallers” his team has all over the pitch will be a force at the new breakdown clampdown.
Edinburgh will be missing Scotland lock Ben Toolis from both the first two derby games, due to recovery from delayed shoulder surgery over the summer.