Cockerill out to beef up Georgia
Rugby Europe Championship
Richard Cockerill starts his reign as Georgia head coach in a remote part of Germany today vowing to put the bite back into the Lelos pack.
In their attempts to develop more of a 15-man game, Georgia lost some of their traditional edge up front at the World Cup.
While delighted to be working with “worldclass” talents such as young full-back Davit Niniashvili, Cockerill sees one of his main tasks as restoring Georgia's reputation as one of the most feared units around.
“In the next four years we want to try and dominate the set-piece again,” said former England hooker Cockerill. “By everyone's admission, that has fallen away a bit; the Georgian scrum hasn't been the force it has been previously, and that's a natural cycle, and the dynamics of the team have changed.
“We have to evolve our game and not only be a physical set-piece team but a team that can play all sorts of rugby. And we have some very good backs who can do that, and we have to create the next generation of front rowers and locks to complement that.”
Cockerill has adual head coach role – overseeing the Black Lion development side as well as the national team. Two jobs are definitely better than none, a position he found himself in after being sacked by Montpellier seven games into the Top 14 season.
“I have been very fortunate every time that I have found myself out of work that I have been able to find work quickly enough,” said Cockerill, who now lives in Tbilisi with his girlfriend. “I chose to go to Montpellier because it was the right choice at the time but it turns out it wasn't to be, but that's life.
“The opportunity to come here and get straight back into coaching just feels the right thing to do. It is a prestigious job. If you're not in the top six or eight teams in the world, for me the next best job would be Georgia.
“It is perfect for me and I am looking forward to getting my teeth into it, and the same with overseeing the Black Lion programme and making sure the next generation of Georgians are coached as well as they can be and we are as successful as we can be.”
While that is one of Cockerill's aims building up to the next World Cup, his immediate task is to lead Georgia to a successful defence of the Rugby Europe Championship, a title they have held for the last six years.
Cockerill, England's interim head coach just over a year ago, between the reigns of Eddie Jones and Steve Borthwick, couldn't have asked for a much easier start.
Germany are ranked 32nd in the world, some 18 places below Georgia and the nine previous meetings between the teams have ended with an average winning margin of 50 points in the Lelos' favour.
After Germany, Georgia play the Netherlands – coached by an old adversary in Lyn Jones – and Spain, before the knockout stages kick in. A reunion with his former England boss Eddie Jones also awaits in the summer as Georgia have lined up a friendly against the Brave Blossoms.
But Cockerill is someone who lives in the here and the now, and his focus is firmly on putting on a good performance against Germany in the Saxony town of Dessau.
“The Rugby Europe Championship is the first challenge.
There's new coaches, new players, and I am looking no further, as ever, than Germany on the 4th of February.”
While Cockerill is well-known throughout the rugby world as a former Test hooker and now coach, his opposite number Mark Kuhlmann has a much lower profile. A former international himself, Kuhlmann, a year older than Cockerill at 54 years of age, has been head coach since September 2020.
It has been a difficult period for the German national team with investment targeted more towards sevens than 15s, and expectations are low heading into the Rugby Europe Championship.
The Black Eagles were well beaten in a recent two-Test series in Hong Kong and Kuhlmann under nocillusions about the size of the task awaiting his team.
“Almost all their players are top-class professionals, especially in France,” he said. “The team is very well coordinated because they spend a lot of time together – almost like a club team. So, from position one to 15, these are all very good players that we will meet in Dessau. It's going to be a great challenge.”
For captain Jörn Schröder, left, it is important that they perform well, in what is the team's debut outing in Dessau.
“We have to perform well and take the experience with us in order to benefit from it in the next games, where the chances should be better,” he said.
The second of today's fixtures should also be one-sided as Poland, who failed to win a game in their maiden season in the Rugby Europe Championship in 2023, take on Romania in Gdynia.
Poland have never beaten Romania in 17 previous Tests and while Romania are undergoing a rebuilding process after a calamitous World Cup under new head coach David Gérard, the former Portugal assistant, the Oaks should be way too strong to be on the wrong side of an upset.
