‘Being brutally honest, I don’t have loyalty to the Tigers shirt’
Ellis Genge does not conform but he does want to help rebuild the Leicester pack mentality
Who is the real Ellis Genge? Who are the real Leicester Tigers? The Genge that sits before me is clad in Darth Vaderstyle wraparound goggles attached to a hoodie – a dark, remote, challenging figure. Tigers have also had something of an identity issue, inept and off the pace against promoted Bristol a fortnight ago yet fierce and resilient against Parisian moneybags Racing 92 at the indoor U Arena last Sunday, giving a flickering imitation of the champion team they once were despite their eventual loss.
Can the real Genge and Leicester step forward, please? In fact, Genge reveals himself in compelling fashion. Leicester may take some time yet before they reclaim their old selves. As far as can be told behind the cloaked exterior, Genge is already comfortable in his own skin. And be careful of setting too much store on appearances, of mistaking gruffness for boneheadedness. The 23-year-old is edgy, provocative, direct, iconoclastic, but he is also caring, insightful and brutally honest. Genge was encouraged to leave Bristol, where he grew up on the gritty Knowle West estate, after being arrested several times, his mother telling him to save himself before he ended up in prison, as had friends and relatives.
That was three years ago, Genge growing in stature at Leicester, where he had been taken on loan despite once challenging the then director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, to a fight. There have been five England caps as well as various injuries, two this year, knee and shoulder, which have sidelined him for a total of 5½ months. Last weekend’s game at Racing was only Genge’s second of the season. There was a telling sequence towards the end when the loosehead prop fielded a ball inside his own half and set off. One Racing defender brushed aside. Two. Three, then joined by Manu Tuilagi, a 50-metre tenpin alleyway of destruction with seven blue-andwhite shirts on their backsides. Genge reveals that each week he and Tuilagi write on the team-room whiteboard their motif for the game ahead, distilling it to “I’m going to run over those b-------”, the prop adding he was heartened by Leicester “staying in the fight”, and that he was determined to “eat it up”, when he took that ball. Was there a burning sense of loyalty to the Leicester cause expressed in that raging-againstthe-light rumble? Here is where the answer got interesting. “If I’m being brutally honest with you, nah, loyalty doesn’t matter,” said Genge. “I’ve seen Richard Cockerill get binned off, [head coach] Aaron Mauger thrown out, [next head coach] Matty O’connor binned out, Peter Betham, Lachie Mccaffrey chucked out, all these players, close friends of mine, great coaches, too, gone. So I don’t think there is loyalty. I don’t have any loyalty to the Leicester Tigers shirt. I play for Leicester Tigers, for my family, for my friends at the club, for Geordie Murphy and I play for self-pride because I want to perform at the weekend in front of a great crowd, because it’s my job.
“Contracts don’t mean anything. That’s the problem we have had in the past three years at this club. We haven’t been together as a team. We haven’t had that pack mentality. We have had disconnects where people don’t want to be part of the culture, but we are slowly getting there. You may not see it from the outside but we can definitely feel it from the inside.”
Genge is a restless spirit. He admits that he had “dark times… depression”, during his injury lay-offs, sometimes being sent home from his rehab sessions at the club “because my head was not in it”. He spent his days off “visiting a friend in prison in Oxford”, occasionally having time to get back to Bristol but “saw the same [delinquent] patterns I did before”.
Leicester fans have not been slow to vent their feelings during the Leicester slump (seven successive losses). Genge, an “abrasive and aggressive person”, in his own words, is not shy about giving it back to them.
“We sacrifice things as well,” he said. “I have missed the birth of my niece. My mum has been ill. My nan has been ill. That’s why I respond when they say, ‘We pay this for a f------ ticket and you go out and play like c---’. The club, who are great, do tell me to put a lid on it. But it p----- me off. I might look like a bit of a d---head but that is how I feel. They say it is the greatest job in the world – you f------ go and run into a 150kg Samoan for a living.
“I’ve ripped my shoulder off the bone. I’ve got no cartilage left in my knee. Apologies for my language. Why on earth, just because we play professional sport, should we have to conform and not be ourselves? Would you rather I sit here and be a robot and not wear the clothes I wear and talk the way I do. I have matured a lot, although here I am with goggles over my eyes, so you wouldn’t think so, would you?”
There are many sides to Genge, the in-your-face competitor who suffers from dyspraxia is also the softie who donated the souped-up £1,000 mobility scooter he bought during his knee rehab to a disabled Leicester fan, Julie Wood. “Julie is a top lady,” says Genge. “All these fans say we give nothing back, well here’s a f------ mobility scooter.” He has appeared on Masterchef “just to enjoy the souffles, as there were no bacon butties”.
Genge will be at the heart of Leicester’s attempt to keep their Champions Cup hopes alive at home tomorrow for the return against Racing 92. The club are in the throes of a makeover, with plans to add a hotel on the Welford Road site to boost revenues in order to compete in the transfer market. As for Ellis Genge, well, he remains Ellis Genge, and long may he do so.