Pro14: New head coach Richard Cockerill wants Edinburgh to earn respect

Edinburgh have finished ninth in the Pro12 in the last two seasons

New Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill is not setting his side any targets other than earning the respect of their rivals during the Pro14 season.

Edinburgh have finished ninth for the past two years in the Pro12.

And Cockerill says getting the club challenging for honours will be a long term project.

"I'm not going to promise anything, I'd like us to go out and produce, and lets talk about it in hindsight," he said.

"Be consistent every week, and create a culture and environment that people want to be part of. We've not finished out of the bottom four since the Pro12 was started so we need to understand where we're at, we know where we'd like to go, but we need a better process, we need to train harder, work harder, and lets see where we get to."

The Englishman has a two-year contract with Edinburgh, but says he is already looking beyond that and wants Edinburgh to move out of the shadows of Glasgow Warriors.

Cockerill believes the Edinburgh squad is better than their recent performances suggests

"There's a lot of things to solve," said Cockerill. "One of those is culture and identity, getting the players to believe, not always being the younger brother of the two pro teams.

"Nothing gets fixed in two months, and we probably won't see the fruits of it for another 12 months of so."

After assessing the squad, the 46-year-old believes he has a strong group of players to work with.

He said: "There's a lot of international players. Scotland have clearly done very well in the last season.

"(There is) a lot of good, young Scottish players that need to come through. There's a lot of potential in the squad, but clearly it's not come to fruition in the last few years and my job is to get the potential out of this squad.

"The squad is good enough to be better than where it is."

Early season Pro14 fixtures:

Friday, 1 September: Munster v Benetton Treviso (19;35 BST), Blues v Edinburgh (19:35), Ulster v Cheetahs (19:35).

Saturday, 2 September: Ospreys v Zebre (14:30 BST), Dragons v Leinster (15:15 BST), Scarlets v Southern Kings (17:30 BST), Connacht v Glasgow (19:35 BST).

Friday 8 September: Leinster v Cardiff Blues (19:35 BST), Edinburgh v Dragons (19:35 BST).

Saturday, 9 September: Glasgow v Ospreys (15;15 BST), Munster v Cheetahs (17:15 BST), Connacht v Southern Kings (19;35 BST), Zebre v Scarlets (19:35 BST)

Full fixtures can be found here: