RICHARD Cockerill, the Edinburgh head coach, has warned the club's followers the club could be facing tough times on the field over the next month when the Test players are away and the lengthy injury list has cut his choices even further.

“We’ve got a very difficult period coming up. It is what it is. We’ve got to work hard with the players we’ve got. We’ll beg, borrow and do whatever we can to get a team out," he said.

"It will be a challenge, but the only way for young players to get blooded and learn is when you have to take a bit of pain on the way."

The back five of the scrum are likely to be particularly hard hit. The position is so dire that 18-year-old Melrose flanker Rory Darge could be in line for a call-up to face the Scarlets on Friday.

Luke Crosbie is out for about six weeks with a broken jaw while Magnus Bradbury is likely to miss 16 weeks if, as expected, he has surgery on his dislocated shoulder. Senitiki Nayolo, signed from London Irish over the summer, has twisted an ankle while Jamie Ritchie and Hamish Watson are off with the Scotland squad.

Cockerill is already having to put out novice second rows with Callum Hunter-Hill the most experienced after a run of two games off the bench before making his first start last weekend against Zebre. He was partnering Jamie Hodgson, making his debut, with Callum Atkinson coming off the bench, also for his first taste of pro rugby.

Not – Cockerill was at pains to point out – that they were responsible for the second-half collapse that saw Zebre score 31 points to come from 3-13 behind to win 34-16.

"It was a difficult game to review," he said. "We played reasonably well for most of the game. First half, we controlled the game very well, but if you make simple errors – there were three really cheap tries for nothing – and the game was taken from us.

"I’m just disappointed, because we’re better than that. I don’t feel let down, because the players worked hard. You can’t give cheap tries away.

“I’m pretty cheesed off that we didn’t get anything from the game but, in the context of where we’re at, we’re very deep into our squad, and sometimes there’s a bit of pain that comes with that."

The problem was that though they matched Zebre, who had had most of their Italy internationals released for the match, in most departments, simple mistakes – an intercept try, letting a high kick bounce, letting go of a tackled player before he was down – cost scores.

“We gave them cheap points. We’ve got some young guys in there who were playing for the first time and they slowly started to run out of energy. You have to learn the lessons of that," Cockerill added.

“I expected us to stay in the fight a little bit more, and I expected a bit more from some of our senior players. They had all their internationals back in the squad, which was pretty unhelpful to us, but that’s what you get if you’re inaccurate and you miss vital parts of the game when it’s a really tight fixture anyway.”

It makes the home game against the Scarlets hard – they are just as badly affected by international demands but have a bigger squad to start off with – while two away games at the end of November – when they have to travel to Newport, South Wales, and then to Cork in Ireland for matches five days apart will be even tougher.