Finishing in the top four was not a success - Montoya

JULIáN Montoya struggled to find the words following their Gallagher Premiership semi-final defeat away to Sale Sharks.

The Leicester Tigers captain said he and his team-mates were “sad” to see their season come to a close, one game short of the Premiership final.

“It is hard to find the words to say how I feel,” Montoya, right, told the Tigers website.

“I am upset, I am sad. I did not want to end our season today.”

Discussing the match, the frontrower said: “Sale were very good today and deserved winners.

“Congratulations to them on reaching the final, they have been excellent all season and earned their place in the final.

“We weren’t at our best and could have done a lot of things a lot better out there, but it is done and our season is over. That’s it.” Looking back on the season, which included the departure of Steve Borthwick and Kevin Sinfield to England in December and Richard Wigglesworth going from player to interim head coach, the Argentine stopped short of seeing the achievement of reaching the semi-finals as successful.

“The start to our season wasn’t very good and around halfway into the season nobody thought we would ever reach this point, but here we are and only a few points from being in the final game,” Montoya said.

“But, look, I will be honest: we don’t see being in the top four or semi-finals as a success.

“We won’t celebrate reaching this point, no matter what anybody thought we should have done.

“We play to win, we play to win trophies and so we see this as disappointing because we will not do that this season.”

Asked what positives he would take from the challenging campaign, Montoya said: “I am so proud of this team, so proud of everybody at Leicester Tigers for what they have put into this season.

“It has been a challenging season, with a lot of different things thrown at us, and we will come out of this with so much we have learned together, about each other and try to be better next year.

“This group does not like to fail, it does not like to lose and today we have to accept defeat and learn from this.

“What I am most proud of though is that I am a part of this club and so proud I am a Tiger.”