Plenty of positives as young players display their potential
HEAD coach Steve Borthwick pointed to the numbers as he praised Leicester Tigers’ “great performance” to defeat Connacht and book a European Challenge Cup quarter-final, writes Bobby Bridge.
Tigers scored seven tries to their Irish visitors’ four to win 48-32 and progress into a last-eight showdown with Gallagher Premiership rivals Newcastle Falcons next weekend.
At times the Mattioli Woods Welford Road encounter was too close for comfort as Connacht twice got within two points before two late tries sealed Leicester’s victory.
“I think you’ve got to respect, Connacht are a good team,” said Borthwick.
“They had nearly 1,500 appearances in their starting 15. That’s just under 100 appearances for Connacht per man.
“You compare that to a Leicester Tigers team of 500 appearances, and 250-odd of them were Ben Youngs. We had 14 players that shared 250 appearances.
“When you look at it in that context, you go ‘this is a great performance’, in the sense of the resilience the team showed.
“Was it perfect? No. Was there things we needed to do better? Oh yeah, we conceded points too easily. We gave them too many opportunities.
“There’s lots to be positive about as well as the lessons we’ve got to learn.”
Borthwick opted to leave out the likes of Ellis Genge, George Ford, Tom Youngs, Dan Cole and Hanro Liebenberg out of his squad but still managed to assemble a side capable of achieving the desired result. Zack Henry, operating from his secondary position of full-back, Matias Moroni and Guy Porter all scored their first Tigers tries while Charlie Clare (2), Harry Wells and Jasper Wiese registered for the forwards.
While rotation of the squad has led to some criticism in the not-sodistant past, Borthwick’s Tigers are achieving both performances and results, irrespective of the 23-man squad chosen.
“This might surprise you but I don’t pay any attention to what anybody else says about the decisions I make,” said Borthwick.
“I believe I make the decisions in the right way for the progress of this team.
“You look at the end of the game, we had a front-row on the field and they’re all 21 or under.
“Then you’ve got Cam Henderson, the second row, at 21, you’ve got George Martin (19) in the back row, Tommy Reffell at 21.
“You start looking at that and you start thinking, there’s some good young players here and the more we can spend time developing these players, the strength of this team, this club going forward, the better.
“I want to win every game we go into. Absolutely.
“But I want to make sure, also, that we’re growing this team and this club. Our supporters will be wanting that.
“Our supporters want to see this team developing and I am looking forward to having our supporters back here at Mattioli Woods Welford Road to cheer the team on.”