Edinburgh will be back into full training on the back pitches at Murrayfield this morning but last-minute try-scoring hero Chris Dean says the entire club is relishing Richard Cockerill’s “hard regime” as they look forward to following up Saturday’s thrilling 1872 Cup first leg victory.
Dean, on as a replacement, nipped off the back of a maul in the last minute to score and complete Edinburgh’s unlikely comeback with 14 men against the previously unbeaten Glasgow Warriors, but the celebrations were short and muted.
While Glasgow’s squad got three days off for Christmas, Edinburgh’s heroes had just Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off and were due back on the training pitch at 8 am this morning.
But Dean says that there will be “no slacking” as the club seek to follow up their fifth win in the last sixth against their rivals with another at Scotstoun on Saturday, and believes there is a new attitude at the capital club illustrated by their backs-to-the-wall triumph in the opener.
“That game shows we have grown as a club and created a character about us,” he said. “Cockers even said that at half-time, he didn’t really care about the result and just wanted to see the backbone we have created.
“He wanted the win alright, so that was true up to a point I guess! But he just wanted to see the strength of that character and backbone we had been building on for the last twelve to fifteen weeks. We did that with that performance and win.”
But even that didn’t get them some extra Christmas time off.
“We only had a couple of days off then back in on Boxing Day training for game on the 30th,” added Dean. “We will come in with a spring in our step but Cockers will bring us back down to earth and give us a reality check. We have a big game on the 30th because Glasgow will come out firing, we all know that.
“(Cockerill) runs a hard regime. But our standards are up there now, there is no slacking allowed. We have all bought into it and that is where the backbone is growing. We are not the finished article but we will keep working as hard as we can.”
Dean’s score will go down in club history as one of Edinburgh’s greatest moments, but it was a fairly ambiguous scene, as the scorer himself described it.
“When Glasgow scored that second try and we went back and scored against them the belief was there,” said Dean, who had come on for an exhausted Phil Burleigh for the final minutes. “When you’re running on from the bench you need that belief.
“I had joined the maul and Neil (Cochrane) had the ball and was telling me to “take it, take it”. But there was a bit of ambiguity, the ref had given the advantage and I looked up to see Jonesy (Lee Jones) and he almost switched off so I thought to myself, ‘I’ll go for it anyway.’
“I did not know I had scored myself. I looked at the ref running over to give it and we were all pretty excited we had done it. It’s been a long time since was at the back of a maul!”
The euphoria didn’t last, however, at the end of the game.
“In the dressing room we were not whooping and cheering,” he said, “We were really pleased with what we did. But it is just a start and we are no means the end product.
“There is definitely a collective belief we can really do it now. Because we train so hard during the week we know it is there for match day.
“We have been in situations now when we have overcome the difficulties upon us like in this game. We are starting to build something.”
