McCaffrey demands fast start from Tigers
LEICESTER are famed for their late comebacks but No.8 Lachlan McCaffrey has urged them to start quickly to avoid having to waste energy chasing the scoreboard late on.
In the Premiership opener against Gloucester they rewrote the record books by coming back from 31-7 down to win 38-31 at Kingsholm.
Last week they almost did the same against Wasps, clawing their way back from 27-8 to 27-22, but two late yellow cards cost them the win in the end.
They travel to Newcastle today and McCaffrey, right, is expecting a strong start, telling The Rugby Paper: “We’ve done a lot of work to make sure we have the mental strength to come back into games but you don’t want to rely on that.
“We’ve got to start games better rather than chase the scoreboard because you’re wasting a lot of energy doing that.
“The Premiership is so good that you can’t afford to let any teams get too far ahead. It’s hard to recover from a poor start.
“Last week was disappointing. We pride ourselves on being a team who are tough to beat especially at home but as a group we didn’t put our best performance against Wasps.
“We got ourselves in a position to win the game in the second half but silly errors cost us in the end.
“But it’s nothing alarming this early in the season. We haven’t played our best footie yet but got a huge win at Gloucester and came close to Wasps. “Hopefully we can tidy things up starting with Newcastle. They’re a hard team to beat and it’s tough to travel to Kingston Park but we’re determined to set a good platform with a strong first 20 minutes.” The Aussie backrower has been an instant hit at Welford Road since joining from London Welsh at the start of last season.
With Jordan Crane and Opeti Fonua monopolising the No.8 jersey last campaign, McCaffrey made most of his impressive 25 appearances from flanker.
But now that duo has left the club, he is looking to make his presence felt from the back of the scrum while growing as a leader.
He added: “There are a lot of good leaders in the squad but the thing I like the most about Leicester is that all the leaders don’t speak too much.
“They just lead by their actions. That’s the Leicester culture and that’s definitely something I’m trying to emulate to the best of my abilities.
“I want to play a big part in the club’s success and especially towards the end of the season when we’ll hopefully be challenging in both the league and Europe.
“I swapped around the back row last season but I’m looking forward to settling at No.8 this season to get my hands on the ball more and link up with other players around me.
“We’ve got some good back-rowers at the club and the combinations with Luke Hamilton and Brendon O’Connor are growing nicely.”
Rotation means McCaffrey sits this game out with the fit-again Mike Williams coming in at blindside and Hamilton moving to No.8
Ben Youngs, Telusa Veainu and Owen Williams come into the Leicester back division.