Cockerill - It's not good enough from us

• 6 September 2020
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Head Coach Richard Cockerill gave a typically honest assessment of his side's performance as Edinburgh suffered a last-gasp defeat to Ulster in last night's Guinness PRO14 Semi-Final.

The capital side put themselves in a hugely promising position - scoring in the 58th minute to go 19-7 up - but Ulster battled back to level proceedings before securing their place in the Final thanks to Ian Madigan's walk off 80th minute penalty.

"I’m disappointed that when you’re 19-7 up that you don’t control the game how we can control the game, and make good decisions and not let them back in," said Cockerill

"Credit to Ulster, but it’s all of our own making. We should have made better decisions and we should have executed better – it’s not good enough from us.

"It doesn’t matter if it’s a semi-final or Zebre at home, you make the right decisions, you don’t have to force the game. You have to do the basics well which we weren’t capable of tonight, which we should be as it’s one of our strengths."

Edinburgh had opportunities to extend their lead early in the first half, but a solid defensive performance from the visitors kept them at bay. Ulster then upped the intensity with 15 minutes to play and it was one way traffic before Madigan struck late to win it.

"I think we lost the penalty count 14-8 or something like that, but we didn’t exit properly, we didn’t do what we said we we’re going to do.

"We kicked poorly, we kicked loosely and they had the opportunity to carry back at us. We were ill disciplined at the tackles, not rolling away, we invited them into our own half and we got what we got.

"We got exactly what we deserved, and they got exactly what they deserved. It’s all our own making – we can solve all those things. In these games it’s the little things that make the difference and some of our players still clearly don’t understand what that looks like.

"We’ve got international players that will go and play test matches for Scotland – they need to know better. They should know better. We’ve had enough opportunities of learning. Tonight we had to deliver and we weren’t capable of delivering – it’s got to improve quickly."