Cockerill out to beef up Georgia

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.

- JON NEWCOMBE

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 “world-class” 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 a dual 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.