Former Leicester Tigers boss and England assistant Richard Cockerill has been named head coach of the Georgian national team and their club side Black Lion.
The 53-year-old was most recently unceremoniously ousted as Montpellier coach in November after just seven games in charge but has had a hugely successful career, most notably at Leicester where he won three Premiership titles and took the club to the Heineken Cup final in 2009.
Cockerill’s appointment ends a nearly four-year search for a national team coach to replace Milton Haig for the Lelos with Levan Maisashvili, their boss at the 2023 Rugby World Cup, originally meant to serve only as an interim.
Maisashvili won the Rugby Europe Championship in each of the four years he was in charge and earned historic wins against Italy and Wales, but under his stewardship Georgia finished bottom of their World Cup pool for the first time in 20 years.
A Leicester legend both as a player that made 250 appearances and coach that was in charge for eight years, Cockerill is renowned for helping teams dominate up front and would seem to be the perfect fit for a Georgian side that struggled to impose themselves as successfully as usual during the World Cup.
Shortly after being sacked from Tigers in 2017 he supported Toulon to reach the Top 14 final as head coach, before a four-year spell at Edinburgh where he took the club to their first and only Pro14/United Rugby Championship semi-final and one of three Champions Cup quarter-finals in their history.
Before his spell at Montpellier he was England’s forwards coach under Eddie Jones and was very briefly interim head coach before Steve Borthwick took the role, though he never took England for a match.
Beginning the dual-role with immediate effect, Cockerill will hope to defeat Clermont Auvergne in charge of Black Lion this Saturday, with the Tblisi-based club still able to qualify for the EPCR Challenge Cup knockout stages if Scarlets defeat his former Edinburgh too.
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