There is no sugar coating it, this has been a disappointing start to the season. At the weekend Tigers suffered another defeat, losing to Saracens at the Stone X Stadium in Barnet. There have been excuses offered around the World Cup and our poor results in equivalent fixtures last year, which have elements of truth in them, but plainly speaking in most pre-season predictions people were expecting much better performances than we have seen.
Tigers have the highest points conceded per entry to the 22, and the joint lowest points scored on the same metric. Put simply we are not scoring enough when we get chances & conceding too easily when we give up good field position to the opposition.
But for a dropped catch by Bath’s Jaco Coetzee, and Jamie Shillcock’s unerring boot, Tigers would be four defeats from four.
The Returnees
It is now time to put all that behind us though. This weekend Tigers should have their World Cup heroes return; headlined by World Champion Springbok pair Handré Pollard & Jasper Wiese, there should also see returns for Ollie Chessum, Julián Montoya, Dan Cole, Ben Youngs and Freddie Steward. Clearly that will act as massive injection of pace, power, brains & brawn into any team. In particular adding arguably the world’s best hooker, the league’s best number 8, England’s most capped scrum half, the World Champion fly half & the best young full back of his generation to the spine of the team should see a dramatic improvement.
Montoya & Wiese will help Tigers get impetus into the attack and create momentum for the wider players to exploit. While Tom Whiteley & Shillcock have played well individually, Youngs & Pollard should offer more control of territory and be better at exploiting the opportunities when they arrive.
Dan McKellar faces the challenge of integrating those players to a group that will not be full of confidence, increasing the pressure on the returnees to bring about a turn in form.
We now see a run of four very winnable games if we have ambitions of making the play offs, let alone repeating our 2022 title win. We welcome Harlequins to Welford Road on Saturday, followed by Northampton on the 18th November, an away trip to Gloucester for the Slater Cup on 25th November and finished by hosting Newcastle on 3rd December. Three wins from four to get back to an even win/loss record is the minimum required.
The Opposition
Harlequins in contrast to ourselves have had a strong start to the season with wins over Newcastle, Bristol and Exeter, while only losing to Gloucester away from home on the last play of the match.
They too will have a retuning Springbok in André Esterhuizen. The giant inside centre was lightly used by South Africa so will be fresh and raring to go, as well as a quartet of England squad members lead by Joe Marler & Marcus Smith who returned to action last week.
The keys to the game are likely to be territory & execution. Tigers cannot afford to keep coming away with fewer than 2 points on average from an entry to the attacking 22, so simply must focus on upping their execution. In defence we have been relatively successful in limiting penalties & entries into our defensive 22, but our woeful close-up defence has undermined the generally successful territorial play so far.
Quins like to play loose rugby and this has lead to an even battle in recent years, winning 3 and losing 3 each in the past three seasons.
Saturday should be another topsy turvy game, and will be a real test for the new coaching staff and for the ambitions of the club this season.
Words by Stuart Keene.
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