‘If you’re not very good at your job, you don’t leave’ – Richard Cockerill’s damning assessment of Scottish Rugby
Georgia and Black Lions head coach Richard Cockerill and the Scottish Rugby Union logo.
Former Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill has issued a damning summation of the Scottish Rugby Union’s culture of failure.
Cockerill is in Scotland with Georgian club Black Lion, who will tackle a Glasgow Warriors-Edinburgh select team, and has not pulled any punches in his assessment of the SRU’s structures and performance.
There has been widespread criticism for Scottish Rugby’s pathway system and academy of late over a lack of young homegrown players, while the Scotland U20s were relegated from the top tier of the Junior World Championship in 2019 and failed to gain promotion last year.
“The young players in Scotland just physically aren’t capable”
Scotland lost to Uruguay in their promotion-relegation fixture and now Scottish Rugby performance director Jim Mallinder is to step down from his role at the end of the season.
Cockerill has slammed the development of young players in Scotland and believes that youngsters are entering the senior squad “underdeveloped”.
“A lot of the young players in Scotland just physically aren’t capable,” the Englishman told the Daily Mail.
“When I arrived in Edinburgh in 2017, I felt a lot of our players in the youth system were physically underdeveloped.”
Nothing ever changes
While Cockerill was clearly unimpressed by the youth structures, the more pressing issue for the ex-Edinburgh boss is that he believes there is no accountability and underperforming staff members keep their positions.
“The people who were in charge of those programmes back in 2017, who I didn’t believe were good enough, are still there now,” he continued.
“How can you change anything if nothing ever changes? That’s the reality. The biggest thing I think about the Union (Scottish Rugby) is, if you’re not very good at your job, you don’t leave. They’ll just move you somewhere else.”
Seven years have passed since Cockerill took on the reins at Edinburgh but he believes very little has changed and used the Scottish front-row as his case and point.
“I joined Edinburgh in 2017 and the two best tightheads [in Scotland] were Zander Fagerson and WP Nel. That’s still the case now seven years later,” he said. “Where’s the next young kid? That’s a concern. Italy are getting stronger and Georgia are getting stronger, I’ll make sure of that.
“When this generation of Scotland players slowly starts to fall off the edge of the cliff, who’s going to take over?”
Johan Goosen’s ‘rugby incident’ will see him miss crucial URC matches for the Bulls
Same people are kept in place
With Scotland clearly underperforming compared to their fellow Six Nations and tier one nations at under-age level, Cockerill questions whether there will be a change to the culture of failure.
“I coached seven games in Montpellier. I won one of them and got the sack,” he said.
“Scotland got relegated from the Under-20s World Cup. They lost to Uruguay. Are you telling me Uruguay have a better youth system than Scotland?
“If you don’t change anything, nothing will change. If the same people are kept in place, running the same programme that clearly isn’t producing results, why will anything change?”
