THEy may have been playing a weakened Munster side, but it was still a significant victory at Musgrave Park for Edinburgh as Richard Cockerill’s side closed the gap at the top of Conference B to two points.
However, the head coach refused to get carried away and called for a more clinical edge.
Tries in each half from Matt Scott and Eroni Sau gave Edinburgh the 18-16 win, but Cockerill’s side struggled badly each side of half time as their 10-0 lead was transformed into a 16-10 deficit before the hour mark. However, they deserved the win and after a Simon Hickey penalty steadied their challenge, Sau’s late try gave them the four points.
Cockerill was not inclined to celebrate though.
“Munster is a great club with great people,” he said. “I’ve got a huge amount of respect for them and I’m very keen to make the point around the circumstance of this [that Munster were saving players for the Champions Cup games]. I have been at Leicester plenty of times when you put a second team out and a team come and turn you over and they’ve run round like they’ve run the World Cup and you go ‘Really is that your aspirations?’
“Well our aspirations are bigger than – with respect – beating Munster’s second team. We need to be better.
“There are parts of our game that were really really good tonight. This is a great win for us, it’s a great four points but circumstance has fallen our way, we all know the reasons why but we’ll take it. But there are parts of our game tonight that just weren’t good enough with the players that we had on the field.
Last week, Edinburgh coughed up a lead to end up drawing with Bordeaux in the Challenge Cup and after this victory in the PRO14 they face the first of their back-to-back games with Wasps at BT Murrayfield on Friday.
They might have to play for that game without the services of centre and try scorer Scott, who sustained a rib injury, but other than his knock Edinburgh appear to have emerged unscathed.
“He popped his rib cartilage. If you’re a prop you get on with it but if you’re a centre it’s a couple of weeks out, isn’t it,” joked Cockerill.
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