Club: Leicester Tigers
Last season: Champions
Odds for the title: 2/2
Season opener: away v Bristol, 16 September
Ins
Richard Blaze (Worcester), Mefin Davies (Gloucester), Ayoola Erinle (Wasps), Owen Finegan (Leinster), Ben Herring (Hurricanes), Ben Kayser (Stade Francais), Aaron Mauger (Crusaders), Boris Stankovich (Albi), Marco Wentzel (Treviso)
Outs
James Buckland (Wasps), Shane Jennings, Leo Cullen (both Leinster), Leon Lloyd (Gloucester), Ian Nimmo (Coventry), Graham Rowntree (retired), Anitelea Tuilagi (Leeds), Henry Tuilagi (released)
The player preview
New signing Owen Finegan gives rucked.com an insight to Leicester’s season preparations
What brought you back to England?
I’ve just signed a five-month contract to cover for the World Cup and I wanted to come back and finish off here. It’s a good challenge and I think I can do a good job while the senior experienced players are away.
Why Leicester?
When I left Newcastle I spoke to both Leinster and Leicester and they both offered me contracts but as I’ve got a lot of family over there I decided to opt for Dublin. Then, towards the end of last season I got a call from Richard Cockerill, to see if I’d be interesting in coming over. I’m glad it’s happened, the set-up here is really professional and I can see why Leicester are in the position they are and defending the Premiership title.
High expectations at a club such as Leicester though?
There are high expectations but as a player you can only come in and do the best for the team. We started pre-season early this year and training’s been hard so I’ve just tried to apply myself the best I can. You need to try and earn the respect of the players when you join a new club.
What’s been the focus of pre-season?
We’ve put a big emphasis on strength and conditioning so there’s been a bit less running. That’s what I’ve found refreshing because other clubs I’ve been involved in have done stuff differently to Leicester.
What’s the squad shaping up like?
I think it’s quite a talented squad. You look at the front row and look and the likes of Julian White who’s good enough to be in the English team and playing in the World Cup and Mefin Davies, who’s also an international. Then you’ve got the likes of Ben Kay and Louis Deacon in the second row and a really talented back row with young players such as Tom Croft, Jordan Crane, Luke Abraham and Ben Herring. Add to that backs like Andy Goode and Tom Smith with Tom Varndell out wide and you’ve got a team that’s full of confidence – and so they should be. Leicester are a side that always uses its squad, so there’s no real change during the World Cup. We’re not going to use missing players as an excuse for a poor performance.
Finally, you almost snatched a treble last season, how do you go one better?
Every year you’ve got to be looking to improve and the only way Leicester are going to do that is by targeting to improve performance: skills, patterns of plays, scrums, lineouts – they’re the things you’ve got to work on. You can’t go into the season saying you’ve got to be doing better than last year because that would mean winning the treble which is very hard. While we will be aiming for that, we’re looking more for an improvement in performance than results.
Supporters’ prediction: 1st. “When you add quality such as Mauger and Erinle to the squad that we’ve already got, you can only get better. We’ve got a good first XV even without the World Cup players so I can’t see anyone stopping us.” John Edwards, Leicester
Rucked prediction: 2nd. Good as they’ll be, we fancy them more for the Heineken Cup as Gloucester will be gunning for them big style in the Premiership this term.
