Tigers facing difficult task to retain title
COMPUTER FIXTURE LIST HAS DONE US NO FAVOURS EITHER!
IT doesn’t seem long since we were all celebrating at Twickenham as Leicester Tigers sent the undeniable message that they were back at the top of the English club game, yet here we are with the fixtures for the new season already announced.
We have known of the two preseason friendlies for some time – a trip to Jersey will provide a nice opportunity for the team to gel, and decent if not overly threatening opposition will provide a work out for the squad.
A return to Mattioli Woods Welford Road and a visit by Newcastle, who are effectively under new management, should make for interesting viewing, although with that friendly, a Premiership and Premiership
Cup match, it means that the Falcons will be the opponents for three of the first five home games of the season, which might become a little monotonous!
Looking further ahead, the first thing to note is that even in a nonWorld Cup year Leicester can expect to see less of their growing army of international stars.
The decision to move the Premiership Cup means that the league programme continues through the autumn internationals, resulting in England players (counting mandatory rests) being available for only 11 of the 24 rounds of the Premiership.
Worse for Leicester, the club’s ‘rest weeks’ necessitated by an odd number of teams both occur during the few weeks that the full squad is available!
A small note for contrast – Saracens’ rest weeks are the first week when international players are still in their stand down period, and a Six Nations week.
Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist or anything, but it does seem bizarre that the fixture computer doesn’t have an algorithm to avoid such obvious unfairness!
It also seems unfortunate that those in charge of the league couldn’t manage to engineer a first week home game for the champions to allow a modest celebration of the Twickenham triumph.
Instead, the hardy Tigers fans face a trek far into the West Country to meet what will undoubtedly be a resurgent Exeter Chiefs after their relative failure last season.
We should probably be grateful that it isn’t the New Year’s Eve match, which has been the case in the past!
It’s always going to be difficult to stay at the top once the pinnacle has been reached.
Leicester will have to do it the hard way and depend on their strength in depth as a squad as never before.