Cockerill confident Tigers will peak for playoffs

SCRUM-HALF Sam Harrison insists: “It’s not all damage – it’s not all broken,” as Leicester Tigers bid to roar back to form against Premiership leaders Saracens at Welford Road today.

The Tigers need to instigate a rapid recovery from last weekend’s lacklustre performance in the 31-10 mauling at Exeter which saw them drop out of the top four play-off zone.

Harrison admitted: “That wasn’t good enough from and now we have a huge game against Sarries, the next team we’ve got to compete with.

“We’ve got to be positive for Sarries at home in front of a great crowd on New Year’s Day. We’ll be positive and kick on.”

Finding consistency is the key for Leicester with Harrison lamenting: “We have one game where we put a solid 80 minutes together and get a win – usually at home at the minute – and then we try and get it right the week after, because backing it up is the most important thing, and so far we haven’t been able to do that.

“The biggest thing for us is getting that consistency. That’s what we need to do if we want to get anywhere but it’s not all bad. We are fifth and there’s not much in it at the top.”

Director of rugby Richard Cockerill insisted: “It’s not all doom and gloom. We are exactly half way through and there’s a a lot of rugby to be played. We are under no illusions that it’s going to be tough but we’re very much in the playoff mix. We have Saracens, who are a very hard side, then we have Wasps who are around us.

“We’ve played everybody once, we sit fifth and we’ll back ourselves to be in the play-offs.”

Leicester have restored hooker and club captain Tom Youngs, as well as England prop Dan Cole and scrum-half Ben Youngs to the starting XV.

Saracens bring England winger Chris Ashton back into the line-up, after his scoring cameo from the bench against Newcastle on Christmas Eve. Alex Goode plays at full-back but George Kruis misses out with a facial injury.