Inspired Borthwick Tigers the drive to Has given back to hit former heights
Paul Rees looks at how Steve Borthwick has re-energised his Welford Road troops
When Steve Borthwick took charge of Leicester in the summer of 2020 during the first of the Covid lockdowns, the notion that in less than two years the Tigers would finish at the top of the Premiership and win all their home matches appeared absurd.
Having flirted with relegation the season before, when they won an eight-pointer at Kingston Park to confirm their safety, Leicester finished 11th in 2019-20 with a mere 29 points. The one team below them had accumulated more than twice as many, but Saracens went down as punishment for breaches of the salary cap.
Bothwick’s first nine matches as head coach did not suggest that the club which had been dominant in the Premiership for the first 14 years of this century was on its way back: the only victories were by narrow margins at home to London Irish and Northampton, and the Tigers went through the campaign without an away victory.
But there were signs. Young academy graduates like Freddie Steward, Ollie Chessum and Jack van Poortvliet, as well as student signing Dan Kelly, were all given opportunities: four have since been capped by England and the exception, van Poortvliet, was one of the scrums-halves in the national squad that trained in Richmond last week.
After Borthwick had been in position for two months, Aled Walters, who had been recruited from South Africa as the club’s head of physical performance, and Tom Youngs, the captain, spoke about the differences between the old Leicester whose decline, gradual at first, had become precipitate, and the new model. They were perceptible only to those inside the camp.
“Steve was a massive reason I left a World Cup winning side,” said Walters then. “When I join a team I want to know that there is a genuine opportunity to be successful. Steve’s reputation and the impact he made with Japan and England swung it for me.
“What we have at the club is an unrelenting workrate and honesty. While we might not get success immediately, everyone has the drive to get the club where it belongs, at the top. When I went to South Africa, the team was underperforming but it had a spine and an identity.
“It is a totally different challenge when you have to create an identity. Leicester has a tradition and it is about getting it back. We want the old gnarliness.”
Youngs, who had started his career with Leicester when they were at the top and felt every step they fell, said such had been the light shone by Borthwick that he could barely remember how the club had been before. “I can see us going somewhere,” he predicted.
Is it a coincidence that Leicester’s rise in the last two years has coincided with a decline in England’s results? Borthwick, who had been part of Eddie Jones’s management team with Japan, was responsible for the line-out and other aspects of forward play, a meticulous planner and observer of players.
“I had coached at international level for seven years,” said Borthwick in the build-up to yesterday’s play-off semifinal against Northampton. “I wanted to coach a group each and every day and improve while lifting a team. It is not very often when you get an opportunity at a club as huge as Leicester, never mind when it was as low as it was.
“What we have is an unrelenting workrate and honesty”
“I was excited by the prospect of lifting it up. I am the figurehead but the chief executive Andrew Pinchen has been incredibly supportive through some challenging times, Aled Walters was part of a World Cup winning team and Kevin Sinfield played at the top level for a long time and was a director of rugby.
“We are a young coaching team. I am the oldest at 42 but I pick the brains of the others. Richard Wigglesworth has been involved in so many big encounters and Brett Deacon and Matt Smith are Leicester through and through.
“It is different from international rugby, but there are many similarities: you try to build a group together around a way of playing and keep developing it. Eddie would always ask me who had improved as a result of my coaching and it is a question I take in here every day.”
Leicester have this season not indulged themselves like
Harlequins and Northampton, nor have they been multi-layered like Saracens. They have played to their strengths, guided by George Ford from outside-half, and the indomitable spirit developed under Borthwick has seen a team that tended to collapse in the final 20 minutes of matches finish strongly, plucking victory from defeat at the last instant in a number of matches, including Saracens, early in the season, Bristol and Connacht.
“There is an alignment now all the way down from the chief executive and the chairman,” said scrum-half Ben Youngs, who, like his brother Tom, experienced the highs with the Tigers before the great crash. “A lot has changed here in the last couple of years, but not just coaches and players.
“The vision is different and everyone is working together. Steve, Aled and Kevin have brought expertise and high standards to training and this has been the most enjoyable of my seasons with Leicester because you can appreciate it all the more having gone through some tough times. There is an energy here again, a buzz and it is an enjoyable place to be.
“There were times when I questioned whether I would have another shot at success with Leicester. When you are younger and things are going well, you take it for granted and think it happens every year. It does not and that is my message to the young lads. You have to work for it.”
Ellis Genge was chosen by Borthwick to take over the captaincy from Tom Youngs. It was regarded as a left-field choice with the prop having the reputation of being, if not a maverick, singular, someone who stood out and plotted his own path.
It was an inspired choice which turned a player who was irrepressible on his day but did not always back up performances to someone who led by example and inspired those around him. It was a move that brought the best out of the prop and the team but, for personal reasons, Genge is returning in the summer to Bristol, the club he left to join Leicester seven years ago.
“I will miss this place,” said Genge. “I was proud to run out for Leicester when we were 11th in the table, but when you have been in the gutter and come all the way up, that is when you feel really proud. If we had not had pride when we were near the bottom, we would not be where we are now because no one would have cared.
“There have been a number of factors behind our rise to the top of the table and a number of unsung heroes. Steve is incredible, a well decorated coach who has not had the plaudits he deserves so I am happy that he is now getting recognition for being such a good operator. I will miss everyone dearly.”
When he arrived at Leicester Borthwick, whose playing career took in Bath and Saracens, said he did not intend to announce long-term plans. He was going to take it week by week, preparing for a match, reviewing it the Monday afterwards and then focusing on the next one. No looking back and no gazing beyond the coming weekend.
“All that matters is the week you are in,” he said. “That is why I do not look back or too far forward. It can seem tedious saying it all the time, but it is what we have done. Of course you have an eye on the bigger picture and there are plans, but it is all about the next game, capturing lessons there and then and putting them into practice as quickly as possible.”
Borthwick was asked about the gap that the departures of Genge and Ford, who is joining Sale in the summer, would leave next season, but he immediately swatted the question away. It was about a moment well into the future and all he was thinking about was this weekend.
Borthwick has given back to Leicester a focus they had lost. There is a way to go before the current squad can be compared to the one led by Martin Johnson which conquered Europe as well as the Premiership and stiffened the spine of England’s World Cup winning squad in 2003, but no one fancies going to Mattioli Woods Welford Road any more.
“The strength we got from the supporters, even during the lockdowns, was something I never sensed at the other two clubs I was at,” said Borthwick. “What I found when I came here was that the players not only wanted to get better, they were hungry for it.
“They had had enough of the tough years and wanted to help build something, from the young players desperate to do well to those who had played a lot of rugby. There was a real determination to get this club competing again. We still have a lot to do because there is a lot of growth in what is a young team. We have to keep moving forward.”
“We still have a lot to do in order to keep moving forward”