‘Polly of old’ on fire at Leicester
Handre Pollard is delivering big time for Leicester Tigers, and he is the commanding presence that has the team well positioned to challenge for the English Premiership title.
Pollard was the difference at the Stoop on Friday evening as the Tigers edged secondplaced Harlequins 20-19. Yip, in yet another one-pointer that favoured the South African, it was Pollard’s goalkicking that proved the difference.
He kicked four from four and his only miss was a 69th minute drop goal while another of the World Cup winning Springboks, No 8 Jasper Wiese, scored one of the Tigers’ two tries.
Since making his Tigers debut in October 2022, Pollard has been imposing and a point of difference for Leicester, which is everything he was not at Montpellier in France’s Top 14. He has most certainly found a club that agrees with him in Leicester and the injury curse that struck so terribly at Montpellier has kept its distance since the 2023 World Cup in France.
Pollard and Wiese were two of the World Cup winners back in the saddle the soonest after the Springboks’ 12-11 defeat of the All Blacks in the most dramatic final. Pollard, from the kicking tee, was irresistible at the World Cup, and never missed a kick when called in to replace the injured Malcolm Marx. Pollard was an injury concern before the World Cup and was not included in the original squad because of an ongoing calf strain.
The Bok coaches Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber felt Pollard’s recovery needed to happen away from the glare of the World Cup and, while his exclusion was a hot topic, the Bok coaches were consistent that there was always a possibility of a fit and conditioned Pollard being drafted into the World Cup in the latter stages.
The story unfolded as if scripted. Pollard played half an hour for Leicester on the weekend Marx injured his knee at training, got through the 30 minutes and was on a plane to France, where he would be integral to the quarterfinal, semifinal and World Cup final wins.
Pollard at Leicester has been everything Montpellier would have imagined they were getting when they signed him in 2019
Pollard kicked all 12 points in the final and four years earlier had kicked 22 points against England in the 2019 World Cup final in Japan. His combined 34 points is a record for a player in a World Cup final — and it is one that may never be broken.
Pollard, brilliant in leading the junior Springboks to the world title in Cape Town
— also against New Zealand — remains the only player in South African rugby history to play in an Under-20 World Championship tournament as a schoolboy and play for the national under-18s and under-20s in the same year in 2012.
Pollard at Leicester has been everything Montpellier would have imagined they were getting when they signed him in 2019 in a transfer that made him the highest paid player in the sport.
The playing statistics, damning at Montpellier, make for delightful reading at Leicester. Pollard, between 2019 and 2022, started 19 out of 29 matches for Montpellier, played 1,523 minutes and averaged 52 minutes a game and six points a game in totalling 175 points. In that time Montpellier played 90-plus matches.
In just 15 months at Leicester, he has played more minutes than he did in four years at Montpellier, averaging 68 minutes a game from 1,776 minutes, and starting 24 of 26 matches. He is averaging 9.5 points a match.
The Pollard who belatedly arrived in France for the World Cup in October 2023 has not looked in the rearview mirror, and has continued to show his class for the Tigers, post the World Cup.
To quote Bok halfback partner Faf de Klerk, “it is the Polly of old”. For those who have followed his career since his schoolboy days at Paarl Gimnasium, it is an older Polly but one that is playing injury-free and with the freedom and swagger of old.